Penny Zibula

Our second tour was a day later with Fat Tire Tours which involved a food tour in the morning and a visit to the iconic Duomo di Milano in the afternoon. Begun in the 14th century and constructed of white marble, the Duomo sits on top of the original 4th century cathedral. The array of stunning decorations on the exterior continued inside: soaring marble columns, geometric marble floors in black, white, and red, a baptismal of red Egyptian granite, magnificent stained glass windows, huge religious paintings, and the original 4th century altar. Our first introduction to Mirella and Fat Tire Tours filled up the morning of our tour of the Duomo.

We took long walks, watched virtual tours of places we wanted to visit, learned to make pasta in a virtual cooking class, and found more time to learn how to refine our individual crafts than ever before. We chose Greenville, South Carolina as our future new home, because it was a larger – but not too large – city with more services, excellent hospitals, affordable cost of living, and most important, much closer to our boys. But we found a great house in a pretty neighborhood, close to shops and services (including Simon’s beloved Home Depot), and the price allowed us to make a cash offer. We only know a few people in Taylors, the suburb of Greenville in which we live, but hope to make new friends despite the Covid grinch who won’t go away.

We are in the process of moving from New Bern, North Carolina to Greenville, South Carolina. The short version of the story is we will be closer to our sons, we will be less isolated, we will have more access to services and excellent medical facilities, and we won’t have to deal with hurricanes. No doubt, we will miss our friends and our lovely waterfront home, but the timing for a move that was inevitable couldn’t be better. Since international travel is off the table for the foreseeable future, and travel within the U. S. requires a lot of planning and effort, the planets seem to have aligned to transform what was, a year ago, a serious consideration into our current reality.

The city walls that totally encircle Lucca for a length of about 3 miles were built in the 16th and 17th century as a defensive measure. During the 14th century, numerous towers were constructed within the city walls, their heights being dictated by the prosperity of the families who constructed them. Unlike a traditional battlement that was just wide enough for soldiers to move weapons and other instruments of war to the locations where they were needed, the city wall of Lucca is a wide thoroughfare that completely encircles the historic section of the city at a height of 30 to 40 feet above street level. The old city inside the walls is primarily a pedestrian only zone with exceptions made for delivery vehicles and the transportation of individuals with disabilities to destinations within this zone.