It was late afternoon when we left Sanremo and I was pleased I didn’t have to drive too far to our next stop, Camping Bella Vista, just 40 miles east near Alabenga in Liguria. We’d stay there just the one night and then head down through Tuscany to Torre del Lago Puccini. The weather forecasts for the north of Italy looked unsettled for the next couple of days but were more promising further south. As it happened, the weather in both Liguria and Tuscany proved awful over the following days and we very much missed out on Albenga and, even more disappointing, Torre del Lago Puccini.
A quick note regarding Camping Bella Vista: It’s in the countryside just a short drive from Albenga. It is a welcoming and tidy little campsite. The couple who run it (a friendly local chap and his Dutch girlfriend) employ a small army of Dutch students to help out and all speak very good English (which makes life so much easier in Italy). The site would have been included in my list of recommended campsites had there been a restaurant or foodstore either on site or in the immediate area but there’s nothing within walking distance (as yet). The bar was okay and, while we were there, I was introduced to a couple of the local wines (from the ‘La Vecchia Cantina’ winery) but, man cannot live on alcohol alone. I was tempted to stop off the next morning to buy a couple of bottles of the winery’s Scuvea Rossese red wine but La Vecchia Cantina is inaccessible to anything other than a small Fiat and, anyway, we really wanted to get on to warmer weather.
The next morning we drove south into Tuscany and paused on the Versilia Coast at Torre del Lago Puccini. I was really excited at the prospect of going to Torre del Lago Puccini. The town was originally named Torre del Lago (after the tower which once stood on Lake Massaciuccoli) but; in 1938 the town changed it’s name to Torre del Lago Puccini in honour of the great Giacomo Puccini (one of my favourite composers – La Boheme, Tosca, Madam Butterfly, Turandot, etc) who lived there from 1891 until his death in 1924. The tower is long gone. It is said Puccini built his house (Villa Puccini) on the site of the old tower but no one knows for sure. What is certain is that when settling in the area, Puccini described it as a “real paradise on earth” and; he lived there for the rest of his life and; he wrote almost all of his great works there. Villa Puccini is now a museum dedicated to Puccini and his works and he’s buried there (together, I think, with his wife and son).
Every summer Torre del Lago holds a Puccini Festival in a specially built open-air theatre (the Gran Teatro all’Aperto Giacomo Puccini) which was built alongside his villa overlooking Lake Massaciuccoli. It holds just 3,300 people but wouldn’t that be an event to attend?!?
Unfortunately, it rained almost the whole time we were in Torre del Lago Puccini and we got to see next to nothing of the area but, keep your fingers crossed, the weather forecast just a little to the east is excellent. Figline Valdarno here we come.