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?
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.
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?
Saturday 1 October 2022 – Warning – lots of photos for you to wade through today!
Pinch, punch, first of the munch. (I hate assonance.) One week to go before we head back to the UK and we start our penultimate adventure, our time in Nova Scotia. As expected, yesterday, spent as it was in travelling two time zones eastwards from Winnipeg to Halifax, was entirely devoid of anything worth telling you about with the possible exception of the taxi ride from Halifax airport to our hotel. The (somewhat elderly) taxi driver started out being courteous and interesting and ended up ranting about the incompetence of government and the unfairness of taxes. He also delivered us to the wrong hotel, but was good enough to apologise and drive us to the right one.
So, today we found ourselves in the capital city of Nova Scotia with reasonable weather in prospect, so there was only one thing for it, which was to go for a walk. Obviously.
We had a chat with a very nice chap at the concierge desk, Tim. One thing we wanted to understand was whether there was a tall building which would give us a view over the city. Our thought was that it would be nice to be able to look down over the Citadel, which is a star-shaped fortress, to appreciate its shape. Tim suggested we go with him; he took us to the top floor of the hotel and unlocked the banqueting suite there, proudly telling us that this was the banqueting facility with the best view in the city. To be fair, it was not at all bad.
It didn’t however, give us the view over the citadel that we’d really have liked, but it did have an interesting ceiling with some great chandeliers.
The other nugget that we learned from Tim was that Halifax has its own (modest) equivalent of Toronto’s underground city, although here it’s overhead rather than underground. It’s called the Pedway, and you can see one of its aerial corridors crossing the road in the second of the view photos above. Of course we had to go and explore it. As with Toronto and Montreal, it’s linkways between halls, with some stores and eateries,
but is still in development – there are many hoardings promising a bright future with more stores to be opened.
It also gave us a view back to our hotel – you can see the inward-sloping windows of the banqueting suite at the top of it.
We also had a chat with Tim about the hotel, which is a curious mix of modern and dowdy, more old-fashioned areas (e.g. the wing where we have our room). It turns out that a complex set of circumstances involving mergers, takeovers, divestitures and pandemics means that planned improvements have not yet started.
Anyhow, we had more of the city to explore, so we headed out to wander about according to the plan that Jane had formulated. We passed City Hall
which overlooks the Grand Parade.
As you might infer from the picture above, an event was brewing in the Grand Parade, involving people of African-Canadian extraction, dressed in their finery and setting up a sound deck. Their mood was jolly and we hope they had a good time, but we had a city to explore so had to move on. Before we did, though, I took a picture of a mural that overlooked a building site
and the City Clock.
Behind the clock above, you can see a hill, atop which is the historic Halifax Citadel (climbing it also gives a nice view over the city’s impressive – but closed for maintenance – Angus L. Macdonald Bridge and the Clock).
We decided to visit the Citadel, as they offered a decently low entry price for us two old people, and so began to appreciate that Halifax has a great historical richness. The Citadel was first established in 1749, and the present citadel, built starting in 1828, is actually the fourth fortification built on the site.
The citadel’s fortifications were built and rebuilt to defend the town from various enemies – the indigenous Mi’kmaq and Acadians, for example, raided the capital region (Halifax and Dartmouth) 12 times, four times against Halifax itself. While never attacked, the Citadel was long the keystone to defence of the strategically important Halifax Harbour and its Royal Navy Dockyard.
The present citadel took thirty years to build and the general introduction of rifled artillery (with greater range and accuracy than earlier guns) shortly after its completion rendered the costly installation obsolescent. It was partially rearmed in the 1860s and 1870s, and continued in use as a barracks into the 20th century.
It is easy to understand its superb strategic location, overlooking the original town and harbour. It’s a very well-maintained institution, staffed with people dressed in period costumes who can tell you about various facets of life there in the 18th Century.
The central courtyard
is littered with cannons
as are the ramparts,
including a 12-pounder
which is still active and which is fired every day at noon – apparently a really loud bang. After our visit, we walked along to the Public Gardens, a very pleasant environment.
Items of interest included a weeping beech tree
and a beautifully-coloured Blue Jay.
After the gardens, we passed the statue of Winston Churchill
were checked out by a starling
and then visited St. Mary’s Basilica,
a cathedral with a very handsome interior.
I was particularly struck by the stained glass half-dome above the altar. It being in the competitive nature of these things, the cathedral has, close by, the Anglican Church of St. David and
St. Matthew’s United Church.
Our rambling then took us in the general direction of the harbour, but en route we noticed that among all the modern high-rise constructions there are plenty of handsome old buildings in the city.
The downtown area has some interesting buildings, too;
and we were pleased to note that there is street art among the attempts to make the city look attractive.
We reached the harbour clock
which marks the start of a boardwalk stretching a couple of kilometres south, from the ferry terminal to the seaport. A lot of effort has gone into making this an attractive and pleasant area to walk, with artworks both mysterious and quirky along its length
(the tower structure is covered with plastic flaps, which flutter in the breeze – it’s rather lovely)
(the above street-light diptych is called “Get Drunk, Fall Down”)
as well as eating and drinking establishments. One of them, the BG (Halifax Beer Garden), was obviously paying its local tribute to Germany’s Oktoberfest, it being October first and that.
There is a life-size replica of the flagship of Ferdinand Magellan’s voyage of circumnavigation, 1519-1522 – the Trinidad
which in its day would have had 45 crew on board. I know people were smaller in those days, but I reckon it would still have been pretty cosy.
The rest of the walk down to the seaport passes many items of statuary – The Émigré, A tribute to Women in History, Samuel Cunard and three of the many examples of what might be figureheads that line the boardwalk here.
One significant statue is of Ruth Goldbloom, who fought for Pier 21 in the seaport to be restored and commemorated in recognition of the nearly one million immigrants who were processed through it between 1928 and 1971.
The plan was to get to Pier 22 which we thought might have some nice eateries and/or drinkeries. We were wrong. It turns out to be a tourist tat haven only open on cruise ship days intended, I imagine, to attract people who are boarding and who need to find just that one more special something for a special someone. Since there was a cruise ship in, only slightly larger than the substantial buildings of Pier 22,
it was open.
By this time, we were feeling somewhat sharp set, so we made our way back along the boardwalk with the idea of eating at a place that we’d seen earlier on, called Sea Smoke. There was a diversion en route in the form of a 1968 Routemaster London Bus,
used for hop-on-hop-off tours and, unsurprisingly, somewhat modified from the original,
because getting off the way we UK folk might consider would probably precipitate a traffic accident and lot of attendant paperwork. So an alternative exit is needed for the passengers
and an alternative entry for the driver.
As we ate our (very fine) meal at Sea Smoke, the cruise ship which had been at Pier 22 came by on its way out;
I’ve never seen so many radar aerials on a boat before.
We watched the ship do a graceful pirouette before exiting the harbour and then we ourselves exited the restaurant, which is distinguished by having many fire tables outside – very pleasant as the evening was chilly.
By this time, the light was fading (possibly matching your interest level in this post).
We passed a final, mystery piece of art
and then, as the evening light flared and then died,
we made our way back to the hotel.
Again, sorry for a long post with lots of photos, but I hope you found the read worthwhile. We had a really enjoyable day discovering the historical, arty and eat-y sides of Halifax, which comes across as being a very pleasant place to be.
Tomorrow has a planned excursion, if all goes well – a 10 mile hike. If we survive, I will be sure to document our progress here, but for now it’s time for bed. See you tomorrow!
