Two days in Lucca.

 As a preface to my comments on Lucca, I’ll just include a few words on our visit to San Gimignano. 

If you are considering it as part of any future holiday plans, take my word- don’t bother. Yes it has amazingly tall medieval towers that can be seen from miles away, but so do most other towns in the area. The only difference is that San Gimmy has more of them. Other than that, it is no different to any of the other hill towns in the area- with one exception. It has bugger all for parking, and what IS available is usual full, overpriced and a good 800 meters from the town centre. In retrospect I should have scrapped it altogether. The guide books offer a somewhat more diplomatic rating but after multiple years of travelling I would put it very close to the top of my shit list! 

NUF said!

 The drive back to Siena took less than an hour to return the rental car. The train to Lucca required a change in Florence but, amazingly the two trains shared the same platform (We’ve experienced some fun runs in the past where the platforms were 1/4 mile apart with a 10 minute connection time)

The entire trip took 3.5 hours- a car could have done it directly in half the time, but there were no direct trains. Mind you, at 23 euro for two of us, I wasn’t complaining.

It was raining slightly when we arrived in town but it was just a sprinkle so we didn’t mind. The old town is still surrounded by its regional walls, with three original gates. Nowadays there are several newer entrances due to increased traffic. Visitors generally cannot drive within the centre so they must walk or cab to their accommodations. 

We found our B&B with few problems and quickly settled in, Our room looks like it was decorated by the Salvation Army thrift store but it is clean and comfortable, but sadly lacking a fridge. There are worse things than lukewarm Peroni!

We wandered the streets for a couple of hours, taking in a few of the local sites while awaiting the opening  of restaurants (7 or 7:30 usually) Some do remain open all day but those tend to be places the locals avoid.

We found a small place off a side street that was a far cry from anything we had eaten since we left Siena. There was no wild boar, Florentine steak or pigeon on the menu. And they served actual vegetables and potatoes, as opposed to wilted eggplant. My usual pick is lamb chops and they were done to perfection. 

In contrast to the other towns we visited throughout Tuscany, Lucca is totally different.

For one, it is absolutely flat, the only slopes being the grassy rises up to the city walls. Secondly the streets ran absolutely straight for up to 500 metres in many areas. The main shopping areas had the same variety as Rome and Milan, but on a much smaller scale with offerings from dollar store equivalent kitchen wares to fashion outlets offering Rolexes and designer outfits that would max out most peoples credit cards.

 Wednesday morning we briefly walked a section of the city walls. Within a path wide enough for a car they cover a distance of 5km. Many people were using rented 4 wheeled 2 and 4 seater “cycles” to get around while others, like us merely walked the path. We covered a couple of km before returning to the town centre where we spent an hour or so wandering the halls of a museum which began with ancient pottery and ended several galleries later in artwork from the 17th century. Most of the descriptions were inItalian although key exhibits also had English explanations.

Leaving there we found a place for lunch offering some 50 sandwich options and several salads. 

After a quick siesta I returned to the streets to window shop while Susanna went for a prearranged haircut at a salon that was decorated with several old barber chairs and arts and crafts made by the owner,

 An 8 pm dinner featured an all seafood menu at a small restaurant with a set menu beginning with 4 small starters- a smallfried fish,steak, squid in a soup base, a cod and potato square and a final offering of mussels topped with small diced vegetable. A pasta course of bucatini in an anchovy based sauce was followed my a large plate of fried anchovies.Espresso  and a small dessert followed and a mandarin flavoured grappa completed the meal. 

Walking back to our accommodations we found a small orchestra and soloist playing a selection of opera standards in a former church now art gallery.new concluded the night browsing a huge bookstore with books on all manner of subjects, mostly in Italian but with sections in Rnglish offering art, music, film and local guides. If I’d had some way of shipping them home Ivwould have purchased several dozen of the books on offer- sibjects ranging from Kubrick films to coffee table books on the works of Freda Kahlo and others.

At 3 am I am wide awake with a slight caffeine buzz after having managed to book our bus and train transportation for the next several days in Sicily.