What's a vacation without a Beach?

Our family loves the beach.  It is always a highlight of every vacation we take near a coast.  Beach days offer many pros, but the best is the much needed kid tax.  They can only handle so many museums before it gets "old and boring"

This beach was literally down the road from where we stayed at near Pisa.  It is a resort town called Tierrenia.  It was not a super warm day, but that did not stop the kids from jumping in!

 The coolest part about this beach is One it was empty!  We hit it before tourist season.  And two, there were piles and piles of shells washed up on the beach.  My kids were sifting through the shells like they were sand.  We found some really great ones!

 Looking through all the shells to find the best ones.

 Oh look, there is a hermit crab inside this one!

 Look here, I found a star fish.  

This was actually one, of two star fish we found and rescued.

After playing at the beach for a couple of hours, we got cleaned up and decided to check out a town near where we were staying.  It is called Lucca.

This was a pretty neat town. It was not full of tourists, so we felt like we had the place to ourselves.  we got to partake a little bit of normal Italian living.  The town center is still walled, and it went virtually unscathed by bombs during all the wars.  Eventually they increased the size of the wall from the thin medieval wall to a thick wall (which is almost like a hill) to withstand attacks by cannons.  Napoleon's widow (who eventually inherited Lucca) decided to make the top part of the ramparts a park.  There is now a running path, benches and trees all along the top of the ramparts.  It was pretty neat to walk around.  A lovely evening stroll!

 Outside the main Duomo of San Martino 

We have to go inside churches in shifts, because the boys are so loud and irreverent!  They love to yell and hear their voices echo.  So half will go in, while half wait outside with the mischief makers, and then we switch.

 In the center of Lucca is the "bones" of an old Roman amphitheater.

Here we are going inside.

 Here we are in the center.

It has been converted to shops and apartments.  I thought it was ingenious.  I have never seen anything like it before.

While in the center of the amphitheater, we picked a cute Bistro to eat dinner at.  I think this was one of our best meals in Italy.  Not only was the food fabulous, the service wonderful, but the ambience was incredible.  It was a really fun night, and one of my favorite towns that we saw while in Italy.

Lucca was also the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini.