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Saturday, July 26th, 2008
Greetings! Today we are in Garfagnana, a wonderful green area in northern Tuscany near Lucca that we were planning to visit for some time now. Our plan is to stay three-four days and do some hiking (Garfagnana is one of the best places in Tuscany if you like to walk up mountains!) and visit some of its small towns. We are staying in Gallicano, at the Bed and Breakfast Eliseo which is a very nice family-run small hotel right in the center of the town. We didn’t have a chance yet to visit Gallicano properly, today is the town’s yearly festival celebrating the patron saint of San Jacopo and everyone was busy with bringing together last minute details and preparing the parade floats, and the streets were closed to cars. We spent the afternoon visiting the Grotta del Vento (Wind Cave) a really interesting carsic cave not far from Gallicano, about 11 km. The cave is covered by extraordinary formations like stalactites and stalagmites, and you can admire underground streams and huge caverns. The calcaric formations are elaborate and grand, standing in the first part of the cave you have the impression of being in a natural cathedral. The managers of the cave were very kind in giving us a lot of printed informational guides, so will certainly write about it as we learn more as well as returning to visit again soon!