It was Halloween and we had no plans. I picked up a copy of the Florentine, which is the crappy English newspaper here, and found an article about a spooky myth surrounding this bridge. Called the Ponte di Diavolo (Bridge of the Devil), it's strangely assymmetrical and sits in a creepy foggy valley. It's medieval, and as the story goes, the devil was seen there several times before leaping from the bridge into the water, never to be seen again.Nowadays, the town it's in, Borgo A Mozzano, hosts the biggest Halloween festival in Tuscany.
Marjorie and I decided this was not to be missed.
So after a perfectly halloweeny train ride through the mountains, we made it to the creepy bridge. We take a bunch of photos, but as we get up to the bridge, Marjorie's camera stops working. Every photo is blurry and discolored, most to the point that nothing is visible. I tell her to check her lens, but nothing appears to be wrong. "Obviously, the devil has possessed your camera," I tell her, "You watch. As soon as we get away from the bridge your camera will be fine." So we walk away. Marjorie takes a picture. It's fine. It was the devil! I can think of no other explanation.
You won't see a sign like this anywhere else.
Then after, we stopped in Lucca for dinner. The entire waitstaff at our restaurant was dressed as vampires, and the menu had been altered for the occasion so that the spaghetti was called guts, the wine was called blood, and (my favorite) the bread was called "pane di morte". Perfect.
