We were sorry to leave Lucca but looking forward to continuing our adventures. Our next stop is Levanto, a city on the coast next to Cinque Terre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We decided to visit a castle and a lake on the way to Levanto. We relied on Google maps to plan our route. The driving was a bit different from the trip to Rome (most of which was on the highway). Now we were on some back country roads which were quite narrow. The scenery was great. The part in Tuscany lived up to all my expectations – very beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The driving was a bit of a challenge. The traffic moved fast on these narrow roads and, it seems, the Italians are aggressive drivers. Brandon did a good job with the driving (interesting how he has adjusted to the new car and Italian driving conditions – much changed from that first nervous day when we picked the car up).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We located the castle fine after driving through some pretty Tuscan countryside. Finding the lake and getting to Levanto was another matter. Google maps took us through some some mountains onto roads that kept getting more basic and into cute little towns (with narrower roads) clinging to the hillsides. The countryside geography looked much different than I had expected. It was very green with trees and other thick foliage that made it seem jungle-like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We never did actually get to the lake and had to settle for having our picnic near a sign with the lake’s name on it. At a couple of points on the trip we had pull over so that an oncoming car or truck (it might be an optical illusion but Italian trucks look particularly big on those roads and beside the typically smaller European cars) could pass by us. At one point, two trucks could not pass each other or back up because cars were backed up behind each of them – needless to say, it took a while to sort out -it is amazing how expressive the Italian language is (especially when the hand gestures are added in).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, Google got us to Levanto a bit late but safe. The time was not too bad considering a couple of wrong turns and one 17k double-back. Levanto looks very picturesque and our Air B & B is very nice – so, a good end to a travelling day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were sorry to leave Lucca but looking forward to continuing our adventures. Our next stop is Levanto, a city on the coast next to Cinque Terre. We decided to visit a castle and a lake on the way to Levanto. We relied on Google maps to plan our route. The driving was a bit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1687"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1691,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1687\/revisions\/1691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/77tozero.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}