On Monday I sorted out my travel plans to Greece, flying direct from Milan to Salonica was the best option but due to something which nobody was able to adequately explain to me, tickets for this journey were approximately 560 euro one way. A visit to the travel agent and some explanation of the nuances of the way that airline ticketing works in this country meant than i walked out with tickets from Pisa to Rome and Rome to Athens at about 200 euro, these were return tickets, but i was not going to return,.. the one way tickets cost twice as much as the return tickets (that makes sense) and some poor sod would miss out on a flight from Athens to rome because they had allocated a seat for my ass even though I would be several hundred kilometres away in a village.

I asked the travel agent chick whether i should tell them that I am not going to come back on the return flight. She fired back the bloody tourists stare and said “why do you want to do that?” Why indeed.

The rest of my time in Lucca was spent revisiting the places I liked, some of the benches along the wall, where you could sit, read, write, sleep and enjoy the breeze and shade, the tower and its not torturous 300 step climb, Puccini’s piazza and birthplace, although not a massive fan of the guys work, i really liked the statue in the piazza, which is simply the man sitting in a typical parisienne style cafe chair with one leg crossed over the other.

I also spent time with some new friends, at the segafreddo and of course my new buddies at Trattoria Gigi.

Time was ticking away, my flight was scheduled for July 4th, not my first choice of date for air travel but it’s done now, no point in dwelling on it.