The guided 3 hour tour costs 25 euro per person and includes the cost of the rental of a mountain bike and related gear (helmet, repair kit), a guide and a technical assistent. An average of 30 kilometers, some a bit hilly, will be covered in the 3 hours, so best to be somewhat fit and comfortable on a bike if you'd like to give it a try.

Here are the two proposed itineraries with relative departure times:

Discovering Lucca

A trip following the ancient roman acqueduct meandering through such scenic areas as Coselli, Vicopelago, Meati- and the river Serchio.

Departure: 9:30 a.m. : guided by the Club Ippico Lucchese, or departing at 9:45 a.m. with Tuscany Ride a Bike
Days: Monday- Wednesday- Friday (June to September)
Price: €25
Distance to cover: 30 km, approximately 3 hours
Route: Club Ippico Lucchese - Lucca - Acquedotto del Nottolini - Coselli - Vicopelago - Meati - Serchio - Club Ippico Lucchese – Lucca

Villas and villages

A tour that explores some of the great historic villas just North of Lucca.

Departure: 9:30 a.m. : guided by the Club Ippico Lucchese, or departing at 9:45 a.m. with Tuscany Ride a Bike
Days: Tuesday, Thursday, Sunday
Cost: €25
Distance to cover: 30 km, approximately 3 hours

For further information and reservations you can contact either of the two addresses below:

Itinera
Vecchia Porta San Donato - Piazzale Verdi, Lucca
tel. +39 0583/583150

Tuscany Ride a Bike
Via Corte Pietri, 1 - 55100 Lucca
Tel. +39 0583/080588
www.tuscanbike.it

As usual the best part was just to wander around town, especially between Piazza Grande and the Walls, and just admire the costumes.

We did buy tickets though, which allowed us to go into the various white tents set up accross the town, so we could spend more money on comics, of course, nearly all in Italian, and a huge array of comics or anime related gadgets. Our son's bounty included a Pokemon T-Shirt, Shadow Sonic and Brock figurines and some Pokemon cards (I'll let you guess what his favourite cartoon is).

The best way to get the tickets while bypassing the enormous lines is to buy then on the previous day, after 5:30pm at the tickets offices in town or near the station. Multi day passes are also available, but you don't save much money with them, and you still have to queue, although not for too long, on the day you are using them in order to activate them.

The weather was beautiful, which was good for some of the most lightly dresses characters (as Edvarg Endel above left, who was wearing only a tiny pareo).

More links, more photos:Flickr Group

The 41st edition of Lucca Comics and Games hosted 58 000 visitors. They first got... quite wet on Thursday and Friday, then a lot happier on Saturday and Sunday, which saw the return of the Sun.

I really appreciated the Sun when I had to wait an hour and a half to get ticket to the pavillions. Actually you really don't need to get tickets to enjoy the event. Just hanging around between the Piazza Grande and the Walls is enough to have a great time. But as I wanted to buy a few comics for Tonio, well, I had to wait...

More links, more photos:Flickr Group

It's really a great event, the cosplay is really spectaculr, and it's well worth visiting Lucca during that period (you might want to book your hotel early though).

The weather was great, and once again attendance toped 25 000 on the busiest day, with over 90 000 over the course of the 4 days of the main event.

The main attraction of course, especially if you are not a comics or game fan, is the cosplay. As Tonio described it: "it's like a paradise for photographers". Cosplayers are always happy to pose for photographers, especially when they are 6-year old, so quite a few of the pictures were taken by our budding reporter.

This year there were lots of super heroes, including some that we had seen last year like Batman and Cat Woman, and the entire Incredible Family quite a few Pirates, mysterious angels and just as many daemons, plus of course the appropriate number of swords. An amazing number of characters from Japanese comics and cartoons that I knew nothing about. And, more surprisingly, Homer Simpson, Sponge Bob, the Ginger Bread Man and Pacman. Even the police were here in style, with both a Lamborghini and... very cure blue Segways. I don't know if they had an helicopter nearby, to keep an eye on all the flying characters.

More links, more photos:

• Saturday Cosplay
• Sunday Cosplay
• Flickr Group (nearly 1300 photos at last count!)

The complete list of exhibitions is available on the expo website.

We visited nearly all of them over the weekend, and my favourite, in no particular order, were:

• Trent Parke (Palazzo Ducale), for his extraordinary use of light, and even better use of darkness, (see some of his pictures on Magnum)
• Francesco Tommasi (Ex Manifattura Tabacchi), from Lucca, for his colorfull pictures of the Italian rollerblading community (after too much black and white my eyes desperately needed a little color), (interview)
• Oded Balility (I also found his name spelt "Balilty") (Ex Manifattura Tabacchi), a poignant series on the Israeli separation barrier,
• Maurizio Galimberti, (Baluardo San Regolo, in the Giardino Botanico), for his way of showing Lucca, through clever juxtapositions of Polaroid-like images (more on his site).

At the same time as the main event, 9 bars in Lucca host exhibitions by local photographers, an event called Photocaffè, organized by the local club Photolife Lucca.

The expo goes on until December 16th, so you still have a chance at catching it this year. If you miss it, then you can always come back in 2008.

note: all pictures except one were taken by Antonio, 6, official event photographer for I Love Lucca