The marble mountains route

After our couple of days in Lucca, we've got one day to get from there to La Spezia. Our plan for our three days there is flexible for the time being; obviously we want to spend one day at least in Cinque Terre.

I've added a few photos to my 'on the road' Flickr set:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157645709737341/

Dad wanted to make a couple of stops today - the first of which was at Ponte della Maddalena. It's an old bridge that was part of a medieval pilgrimage route from Rome to France. It's feature is its high arches. While I was there, I also saw a nice photo opportunity with an old VW beetle:

 Around the Ponte della Maddalena

After that, we continued to a small old town called Barga. There was a church with a particular structure inside that dad wanted to look at. But first, we sat and watched a game of... well, I don't know what it's called. It's a cross between high school handball, tennis, and volleyball. I think. There was some form of championship going on, and there were very animated discussions over line calls. As dad said, this is the type of thing that starts family feuds.

We eventually went up to the church and saw the old structure inside the church, stopping a couple of times to take photos:

The town of Barga

From there, we took the 'scenic route' to La Spezia, which took us through the marble mountains. Yes, these are mountains actually made of marble. Italy has been harvesting the marble for ages, and the results are quite spectacular:

Marble mountains

That was basically it for the travelling part, with one notable additional stop to take a photo of this rustic old building frame:

Rustic old building frame

After arriving late into La Spezia, we got into the apartment and then raced off to meet our relatives from Canberra, who happened to be in La Spezia at the same time as us, for dinner. I was meeting them for the first time this trip, but dad had already met them and travelled with them for a couple of weeks before they left to do their own thing.

After we had finished dinner, full to bursting, we took a wander down to the La Spezia waterfront before heading back to the apartment. There's no WiFi in the apartment, so we'll look to visit a McDonalds or somewhere similar tomorrow.