Italy with the motorbike, part 5

Den deutschen Text (zusammen mit Teil 4) findet ihr HIER.

May 16, 2012 continued

The Hotel Santo Steffano was run by a Swiss lady and her Italian friend. The associated restaurant, however, was driven by a different tenant. We ate there in the evening and thought it was very good. That night there was disco dancing at the restaurant until 2 a.m. Forget about sleep … We were actually most concerned about our motorcycle that was parked outside. We didn’t know what kind of people they were. Since we couldn’t sleep anyway because of the loud music, I snuck up to the first floor at the end of the disco evening. There was a window facing the parking lot, from where I could see if anyone was walking over to our motorcycle. But nothing happened, nobody even went near it, and after the last car door had slammed we could finally sleep. There is always disco on Wednesdays, so you are warned! Otherwise we can recommend the hotel. The lady of the house serves a very nice breakfast, even with an egg if you wish.

She told us how difficult it was to have a business in Italy; the taxes would eat you up. After paying her with cash, we saw her get into a car and drive off. We suspected she was out to pay someone to whom she owed money. They didn’t just live off the leased hotel; her boyfriend had another job. She was not very confident that they would be able to stay at the hotel under the circumstances that prevailed in Italy at the moment. It’s a shame, it looks like things are going downhill everywhere.

17.5.2012

On Thursday we continued south. Friends had recommended the city of Lucca to us. We looked at the location on the map and found that there would be good day trip possibilities from there. So we decided to definitely stay there for three nights.

The way to Lucca led us via Carpi, Modena, Sassuolo, Frassinoro, Passo delle Radici, a beautiful pass road, Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, Gallicano, Bagni di Lucca.

In this section, too, I didn’t take as many photos as usual, I was so busy looking. So I will cheat and put in a few photos of the Passo delle Radici that I took on the way back.

In Lucca we only had to drive around for a short while to find an appealing hotel, Hotel San Marco. Since Saint Mark had already given us good accommodation in Auer, we decided to try it there. Also highly recommended, by the way, with underground parking. We have been lucky with our hotels. http://www.hotelsanmarcolucca.it/de/ The hotel really looks like on the pictures, at least in 2012. The website is in four languages ​​and the young man at the reception spoke all four of them, English, French, German and Italian (he was Italian). The old town was only a five minutes walk from the hotel.

Here are just a few photos of Lucca, more will come later, because Lucca will get a separate post.

(To be continued)