Tag Archives: churches

Another Lucca round

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Sunday 11 May 2025 – Our last day of “freedom” before the serious walking starts, and the local variant of Mother’s Day here, which meant we (the two ladies, that is… some assumptions being made here!) benefited from some extra chocolate at breakfast.

The breakfast available was, otherwise, rather woeful; particularly absent was any hint of fresh fruit. Still, we fuelled up on what we could find and made our way out into a delightfully sunny day.

We had some formal objectives for our wandering – a couple of towers, a couple of churches and, particularly, a lunch in the Piazza del Amfiteatro which we hoped would be a Nice one.

Selecting our activities based on when the light might be best for photography, we started with the Torre Guignigi, which is unique in having holm oak trees growing out of the top of it.

It is one of only two medieval towers surviving in Lucca where once there were more than one hundred.

There are over 200 steps to the top, but despite this it is a popular tourist site

and it offers some fine views over the city.

We felt we’d earned a coffee break before we walked along to our next place of interest. This was the Church of San Michele in Foro, which boasts a very impressive facade

but which is a little unusual in that it’s clearly more a place for meditation and prayer than a place to listen to the word of God – there are no pews, and the space is entirely open.

By this stage, we knew that the cathedral would be open for visitors, and so headed that way, passing, as we did, the 12th century church of of San Giusto, which, like several churches in these parts, has a very striking facade.

The cathedral, the Church of St. Martin, is, as one would expect, an imposing building, again with a wonderful facade (the picture below was taken later in the day when the sun illuminated it better).

Inside is the sort of space one would expect in a significant cathedral

lavishly embellished

with some impressive marble work

and some lovely stained glass

some of which was throwing wonderful colours from the sunshine.

There’s a sort of “temple within a temple”

which, under normal circumstances, would house the Volto Santo, the “Holy Face of Lucca”, an 8-foot tall carving of Christ on the Cross

 

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

but at the moment contains just scaffolding, as the figure has been removed for restoration work, and can be seen displayed in a workshop setting in the church.

Inside the cathedral is a statue of the eponymous “St. Martin and the Beggar”

showing the saint using his sword to cut his cloak in two in order to give half to the beggar. This is the original and there’s a copy now on the facade of the cathedral,

looking, it has to be said, in need of the ministrations of someone with a power washer and a long ladder.

With over an hour left until our lunch appointment, there was clearly time for those of us with courage, fortitude and good quads to climb the other tower of note in Lucca, the Torre del Ore, the suitably-named Tower of the Clock.

It turned out that I was the only one of the three of us prepared to make the journey, and it turned out to be rather a lovely experience; in striking contrast to the Torre Guignigi, I was the only person in the tower, apart from the gatekeeper, who charged me €8 to climb the steps. At the top I had the entire platform all to myself

and could enjoy the lovely views over the city

including a great view of the Torre Guignigi.

Whilst I was climbing the tower, Jane and Caroline relaxed at the near(ish)by Gorilla Craft Beer and Cafe, where I eventually joined them so that we could sample some Italian gins as an agreeable prelude to lunch. That was taken back in the Piazza del Amfiteatro, at a very good restaurant called Sotto Sotto. We were well looked after by Eugene and eventually tottered back to our hotel so that we could get some rest and prepare for the forthcoming rigours.

Tomorrow is Day 1 of The Walk; we will walk to Rome, and Caroline will join us for the first week, as far as Siena. The significant datum is that we have nearly 30km to cover tomorrow, after a short  train journey to where we will start, in Altopascio. We’re all feeling a little bit daunted by the thought of the distance we have to cover, and you’ll have to keep in touch with these pages to see how we get on, won’t you?

 

Camino Rest Day 2 – Burgos. Blimey!

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Thursday 31 August 2023 – We’ve had a day to decompress after the long walk yesterday and so despite yesterday’s exertions we went for a walk. Obviously.

Jane had mapped out a few Things To See and so after a very ordinary hotel breakfast (after probably the least comfortable bed of our time on this particular junket) we headed out into the streets of Burgos, which is a very handsome city.

The first stop was the cathedral, Santa Maria, which is brain-bogglingly big, and inside so extraordinarily sumptuous that I actually felt a bit offended on behalf of all of the people to whose benefit the money involved in creating this edifice did not go. But it may be that my jaundiced view was as a result of a poor night’s sleep.

Catholic cathedrals are intended, designed, to inspire awe. I found that the completely over-the-top Sagrada Familia in Barcelona did inspire that in me to some extent. Santa Maria, not. But it was still interesting to look round – and the infrastructure to guide tourists (signage, app for audio guide, etc) is very well designed and implemented.

The thing has over 12 chapels, for God’s sake! (see what I did there?), amazing stone working and other fascinating aspects.  Rather than bore you with the many, many photographs I took, I have put some of them in a Flickr album; click the image below if you would like to look through them.

Santa Maria Cathedral, Burgos

Here are a couple of photos to give you a taster.

Wandering around outside gives a few views of the place and surrounding items of interest.

The Santa Maria Cathedral is on Santa Maria Plaza, and access to that is through Santa Maria Gate.  Looking at it from the square, you see something substantial.

Walk through it and look back, though…

From there, one can walk along the Paseo, a pleasantly shaded green space

with a bandstand

and lots of statuary,

including that of four kings, who can also be seen on a bridge at the far end of the Paseo.

For the record, these are (in alphabetical order) Alfonsos VIII (1155-1214)  and X (1221-1284), Fernando III (1199-1252) and Enrique II (1334-1379). Just so you know for the quiz later.

There’s another significant figure enstatuated round the corner – El Cid, the honorific for Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, a Castilian knight and warlord in 11th-century Spain.

There’s a huge amount to see wandering around Burgos, as befits somewhere that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Castile. Much statuary both modern and ancient

varied street art,

imposing gateways and churches,

St. Stephen’s Gate

St. Stephen’s Church

a tourist train,

and ancient city walls.

There is also a castle; we tried to get in, but it was closed. That exercised me sufficiently that I walked the 200 steps back down to the hotel to get my drone to walk back up the 200 steps to take a photo of it,

so you can now understand why it was closed. On the way, though, one passes a fantastic viewpoint over the city.

which I think is the best way to leave it – too much to see to do a splendid city justice.

We’re back to the walking thing tomorrow – 21km to Hornillos del Camino, on the first trek across the second third of the Camino – the Meseta.  The forecast is for a chilly start but a warm finish and it will be interesting to see the how different the landscape is.  To find out, check back in at some stage, won’t you?

A departure from the unusual

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Tuesday 13th July 2021. Today was departure day, with all of the old familiarities of international travel subsumed by the strangeness and uncertainties imposed by the pandemic. Our departure was not until 4pm, so at least we could do something we  are used to doing, which was to wander the streets of a town exploring as we went.  The area of Reykjavik around our hotel is full of lovely little architectural touches, as well as homicidal people on rented electric scooters, and it repays rambling around. In many places, the actual streets are decorated.

and there’s the longest hopscotch track [Jeremy Clarkson Voice ON] in the world [Jeremy Clarkson Voice OFF].

Many of the buildings have some quite extravagant art on them.

And the touches of colour are not only for the traditionally-architected buildings

but can also be found among the more modern ones.

At one stage we stopped for a coffee, in, as it happens, the bar out of which we got chucked at closing time yesterday.

At that point we were en route from the downtown area which contains both the Lutheran cathedral (which, while attractive enough, is, well, just a church really, and hardly Interesting at all)

and the Roman Catholic cathedral (the Church of Christ the King, an altogether much grander affair, unsurprisingly)

in our search for the final Interesting Church of the holiday, which we’d espied as we scurried to and from our Covid test.

This is Háteigskirkja, which as far as I can tell is a non-denominational church. Its website modestly refrains from conveying very much useful information about it, which is a shame, because it’s a striking building; and as the door was open (unusually in our experience of Iceland’s Interesting Churches) we ventured in to find some lovely mosaics inside.

Climbing the stairs to the gallery level we noticed yet more stairs continuing up… the place was deserted so of course we climbed them, eventually arriving at a final workman’s stair up to an open trapdoor… Well, what is a photographer to do when faced with an open trapdoor? Thus we clambered out into one of the bell towers.

When we did this, it was about five to midday and I wasn’t going to hang about trying for artistic images just in case these bells were attached to a clock – so we scarpered back the way we had come!

On the way back to our hotel, we caught a glimpse of the back end of Hallgrímskirkja, the “Space Shuttle” church.

I was quite glad to get that picture, as it’s very difficult to do it from near the church itself.

And that was the end of our wandering around Reykjavik, as it was time to collect our bags and hope that the taxi would arrive that Dagur had promised us would take us to the airport.  Arrive it did, bang on time, with a very large and friendly chap driving it. He whisked us off to the airport where we went through the various formalities of providing the necessary documentation to prove we weren’t currently plague-ridden.  As we approached the security check, I realised that I still had my penknife with me; I usually remember to pack it in my hold luggage, as the security bods don’t generally like people carrying them on to aeroplanes.  Since this was a Swiss Army knife – not a huge one, but even the small ones are ridiculously expensive to replace – I decided to ask the security chap if there was any way I could take it through.  Rather to my surprise, he said it was OK, which was nice of him.

Covid paperwork – and the necessity to wear a mask – aside, the departure process was exactly like it always was, though I suppose the airport was less crowded than it might have been.  After a mask-free fortnight, this was not particularly welcome, but it shows that care is still needed.

We treated ourselves to a coffee and a toastie, and boarded the plane, which was only a few minutes delayed. Much to my surprise, the WiFi on board was free, so I took the opportunity to update this blog as far as I had time to do (you’ll have inferred that this didn’t include today’s entry), and took advantage of some sustenance to fuel the creative juices.

(That wasn’t all me – Jane decided she had to provide moral support.)

Arrival at Heathrow was on the original schedule, and we took the usual half-mile walk to get to the border checks, wondering if there was a horror story about to unfold, having heard tales of six-hour delays and horrendous queues.  Much to our surprise, everything was very swift.  We had all the right paperwork, we whizzed through the border checks, our bags came out pretty fast and our taxi was very nearly awaiting us, we got through so quickly – Heathrow Terminal 2 was very, very quiet.  From touch down to getting the kettle on at home took barely over an hour and a quarter.

And so we reach the end of our adventure into a really unusual place.  Iceland is a remarkable destination, even if you only stay and do the tourist bit in the south; but having seen most of the accessible areas of the island, with, in Dagur, a guide who knows his way around and could make sure we saw things of interest to us, made our time there even more impactful. And we’ve covered a lot of ground:

The middle bit is only accessible with courage and a backup car, but looking at that summary I can understand why our brains were full of the sights, sounds and smells of the country.  It’s been a fantastic fortnight, and we’ve loved the place.  We Will Be Back, as it will be interesting to see what the place is like in Winter (apart from just cold, of course).  I’ll do a further blog post with some general summary-type thoughts about Iceland, and so maybe you’d like to come back in a couple of days to take a look; it will be our opportunity to round off what’s been an extraordinary holiday in a really unusual country.