Rain, Puddles, and the Nottolini Aqueduct

Rain is falling again. It drizzles then stops. Then pours. There’s lightning, there’s thunder, and it’s wonderful. It has rained here every day and night this week. The stoned streets are puddled, our rain jackets wet, and we are warm and safe in our lovely Tuscan flat. My seven year old has finished her 4th book in the last two days. Boy, has life taken a turn. My girls hardly know what to think, coming from a drought ridden California. It has honestly rained here more in the last week than it has in the last year for us. We have been praying for rain for so long, that we are truly just tickled to open the windows and marvel at the sights and sounds. Well I am at least. The rain is loud on the rooftop, and we have employed earplugs to help the girls sleep.

After a wet week, we took a Friday field trip. We decided to stay close to home and explore greater Lucca on our bikes. We made a quick stop to pick up lunch on our way outside the city walls and we were off. Dave had done a bit of research and served as tour guide for the day. In keeping with our wet week, we decided to ride to the Nottolini Aqueduct and follow the trail to the cistern. A round trip of approximately 8 miles. It was an overcast day, and we were glad to be out of the house!

We crossed a few busy streets before we arrived at the trail and found it had suffered the effects of a week's worth of rain. After a quick family meeting, we decided to press on, but not without anxiety! Thankfully this entrance was the muddiest, and our whole day was not quite so treacherous. AND the girls eventually got braver and rode right through the puddles. Yay! Another adventure! I love watching these two girls tackle challenges. 

Along the way we stopped and ate our lunch, Arya claiming the one dry spot. While we ate we took in the countryside around us. We were among plowed fields, brambles of berries, and Tuscan farmhouses with chicken coops and gardens. Bisecting it all was this 160 year old aqueduct. After 28 years of construction the idea of getting fresh water from several springs on Mount Pisano all the way to Lucca was realized in 1851. No, this was not an ancient roman structure.

Finishing lunch, we followed our muddy path alongside the 400 arches towards the neoclassical cistern at the base of the mountain in Guamo. We parked our bikes and everyone explored. Because the aqueduct is no longer in operation, we were able to climb around what is left. Inside the cistern, there is a basin divided in two parts, where water was channelled into 3250 meters of brick and masonry all the way to a little temple cistern in San Concordio. The larger cistern we were exploring was moss and vine covered, stained from weather and erosion, but nonetheless stunning. We all enjoyed singing and yelling into the abandoned structure and hearing the reverberation of our own voices!

We walked past the cistern to check out the surrounding area and got a true taste of country living, complete with a "Buongiorno!" from two elderly women and a not so ferocious dog protecting his domain.

On our way home we decided on a different path so that we could stop for groceries, and got a little lost. Or misdirected? Perhaps we just misinterpreted directions from a very sweet old man that we rode past. All ended well. Just a few more marshy paths, a dead rat, and the pushing of our bikes over an overpass. Groceries in baskets, we arrived home before dark and settled in for what looks to be another week filled with rain!

Lucca Comics and Games Festival

Way back when we were searching for a city to make our home, I remember noticing in my research of Lucca a location on Google Maps called "Lucca Comics and Games". At the time, I didn't pay it much mind other than thinking that it would be nice that there would be a comic store nearby so I could hopefully get a bit of my geek fix while far away.

Flashforward to our site-inspection tour of Lucca back in July. When we visited, I again noticed the location on the map for "Lucca Comics and Games". Of course I decided that while we checking out the town, I should see what they had to offer for this Big Bang Theory fan. Hopes raised, we went to the spot on the map and found a comics museum. Ok, not bad. With visions of Batman histories and Dungeons & Dragons memorabilia in mind, we paid a few Euro to go in...and were let down severely. It was a rather bizarre mix of a poorly laid out museum to Italian comic strips and World War I museum. Seriously strange.

After that visit, I had kind of checked off "Lucca Comics and Games" as a loss and didn't think much about it again until we moved in in August. Trying my best to find as many cool things to experience this year as possible, I started searching for everything Lucca. When I did, I managed to find a page for "Lucca Comics and Games Festival". So that was different. It looked from the website like it would be a pretty cool, legitimate comics festival. I figured it would be set up near that spot I had seen on Google Maps long ago, thus the "not quite what I expected" museum. Cool, something to look forward to.

Come the beginning of October, there were suddenly white tents being put up in the part of town where that mark was on the map. But not just there, everywhere. All over town. Literally. Every piazza in town was being filled with white tents. Outside the wall, there was a huge tent put up. Football fields big. Yes, multiple fields. As the October 18 "Exhibition" start date approached, I started to get a sense that this might be some kind of real festival and started to get excited.

October 18 arrived and I was expecting to see exhibitors showing up. I saw a few signs that listed morning and afternoon hours for exhibits (or least as best I could tell given my burgeoning Italian skills). Alas, nothing. October 19. Nothing. 20, 21, 22...nothing. My hopes began to be dashed again. However, it did say the "Festival" would start on October 30 and I noticed a lot of local businesses who had nothing to do with comics suddenly adding comic/geeky things to their store fronts, so I kept my dream alive.

On October 28 we noticed a few trucks bringing some things in to a few booths, but still nothing that looked that impressive. But surely with all those tents it would be cool, right? Well, October 29 we left town for the day and didn't see what went on.

On the morning of October 30, Ashley and I set off to one of the areas to see what was there...and that's when we realized my dreams were about to be realized. We saw this spectacular "fancy Pikachu and Arcanine" (those are Pokemon for the uninitiated).

Long story short (too late!), this is not just a local get together of a bunch of dorks. It's a huge international get together of a bunch of dorks! Found more information later that this festival is the 3rd largest of it's type in the world behind only Comic-Con and one other European festival. There were exhibitions from all the major film companies, many video game makers and vendors, tons of tabletop game booths, and of course comics from all over the world. Being that it was an Italian festival, there was a lean toward Italian and European artists and comics, but still amazing. Lots of the top tier properties were represented by official exhibits: Star Wars, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and Ghostbusters to name a few. 

Particularly cool as well was the Assassin's Creed area. They didn't just have a booth. They took over a really cool looking old building here in town that looks like it could be directly out of the game and had up art and demos from the forthcoming game. No good way to describe how cool it was in person. The pictures below don't do it justice. Trust me, awesome.

Of course along with any convention of this type comes the cosplayers! For those who are not into the geek world quite enough to what cosplaying is, it is a subset of fanboys/girls who enjoy dressing up and often playing the part of their favorite characters from movies, games, books, tv shows, general geek culture. Lucca's festival did not disappoint. Every 10th person was dressed in something with quality ranging from a Superman T-shirt under a suit to be Clark Kent to costumes that look better than the characters look in their original media! Here's a handful to get the idea.

Of course there were many booths with all of the geek swag you could want. Games and comics of course, but also action figures, stuffies, books, clothes (everyday and cosplay), vintage toys, "young person" drinks and foods, and even some very fancy toilet paper.

So you've pretty much gotten a decent idea of what the festival was like now minus one thing. The crowd. On a normal day in the summer, the busy days were pretty busy. You walk through town and pass people constantly, occasionally have to maneuver around a large group. The festival had crowds like I could not image. I literally could not go anywhere several times. Complete body-to-body gridlock. For four days, Stacey pretty much didn't leave the house. Not in protest to my geekiness or anything, but because you couldn't get anywhere. Had I not been a resident and tried to come here some afternoon to check it out, I wouldn't have really gotten to see anything just because it's spread all over town and the congestion is such that it's impossible to move at more than a snail's pace. Check it out:

Look again carefully at that last picture again. Notice in the distance a car? Yeah. It's trying to drive through the crowd. That was super. Oh, and the third picture down shows a bit of the inside of the aforementioned huge tent outside the wall. Told you. Huge. And packed.

There you have it. A taste. I could go on about my experience at the various places. How the Star Wars booth was a total waste (no first glimpse of The Force Awakens! Boo!). How Ashley is a blossoming little geekette and chased me around most of the time (Arya went out one day of the 4, I'm still working on her).  And probably some other amusing anecdotes, but I think that will do.

Oh, one more thing. As if people didn't have an excuse to dress up enough, the second day of the festival was Halloween. We had understood that it was not really a big deal here like it is in the US. That turns out to be pretty accurate. Other than a few kids I saw running around town and a random group of girls who live in our apartment building who stopped by to try to trick-or-treat (sadly, I wasn't prepared with candy!), there was not much going on. However, since there were festival people around dressed up and it just seemed we should, the girls made some makeshift costumes and we went out and wandered town a bit that night. For having nothing around, I think they turned out alright! Best cosplayers of the week says Dad. :-)