We were glad we attended Bagni Di Lucca’s Pinocchio celebrations on Saturday for this event, organized by the master mind of Marco Nicoli, had to be cancelled on Sunday because of the uncertain weather. This morning the first rain we’ve had for weeks continues unrelentingly.

Anyway, Saturday was full of enjoyable happenings.

The intensely colourful paintings by Eva Alessandra Lombardi in the town hall foyer vividly illustrated key episodes in the world-famous children’s book authored by Carlo Collodi. Buildings from the town featured in the exhibition, the casino and Villa Ada among them. This was most appropriate since the land of games, toys and pleasure, ‘il paese dei balocchi’, as described by Collodi, was inspired by the former reputation of Bagni Di Lucca as the playground of Europe, with its spa and casino.

The stalls sold a wide variety of handicrafts:

There was an abundance of activities to delight children at heart of all ages.

I was happy to see the return of the colombina, the traditional Bagni bun in the shape of a stylised dove, baked by the Tana del Ghiro restaurant.

The puppetter was especially good and held his audience in thrall with an Italian transformation of the English Punch and Judy show with the crocodile transformed into that equally ferocious giant shark.

It was indeed a pity that this highly attractive festival could not continue into the following day as originally planned. However, Autumn is now truly with us: temperatures have dropped, the mountains are shrouded in mists and further thunderstorms are on their way. After all, September 23rd is the day of the solstice when days will start becoming shorter than nights…