After Rome, we hopped on a train and headed to Lucca in the Tuscany region. My name is Luka. I live on the 2nd floor. I live upstairs from you. Yes, I think you've seen me before. You're welcome for that little gift being stuck in your head now. I was singing it the whole time we were there. Lucca was probably my favorite place that we stayed in Italy. A big part of that was the half day cooking class Kylie and I took with chef Paolo while staying at our quaint little hotel out in the countryside outside the walled city. So peaceful and beautiful there with rolling hills and vineyards all around. Enough chit chat. Let the photos begin. This was the view of the countryside from our room.

This was the entrance to our little hotel.

Within the first few minutes we were there, we headed out on a walk to explore the countryside. Kylie caught this image of me within the first few minutes when I was making my way back across a ditch from taking a photo.

We saw a woman and her son walking a wheel barrow down the road to empty their trash in a nearby garbage bin. I wanted to get an image of them walking towards us, but I felt a little awkward about making her uncomfortable.

We found this little abandoned building along the side of the road, so I propped up my camera on the road with my wallet and a lens cap, flipped it over to timer-mode, and fired off a couple images of me and the new Mrs. I loved the golden light this time of day and how it was spilling on the the upper half of this wall.

While we were out walking, we met Victorio. He was out working in his vineyard preparing the vines for the next growing season. Such a sweet ol' guy... he spoke enough English to give us a little grape growing education and told us all the different types of grapes he was growing, what kind of wines were made with his grapes, where his wines were sold. The bottles produced from his grapes sold anywhere from about $6/bottle up to several hundred dollars per bottle. He offered to give us a bottle made from the grapes from his field the next day if we stopped by, but unfortunately we ended up not being able to meet up with him because we had to leave to head to Vernazza.

Hey, it's Mrs. Nicolosi! Still sounds weird to say.

The rest of these images were from inside the walled city.

Courtesy of a Rick's Steve recommendation, we ate dinner here and it was fantastic. We actually walked in around 7pm and they said they were closed. Wuh? Closed? Are you kiddin' me?. Then she asked if we wanted to make a reservation for 7:3o when they opened up. Oh... our bad... we like you again now.

Dinner for 2, please.