Somehow, we're at the point where we only have about three months left before we leave Florence, and Italy, behind. (For now.) This is kind of shocking, at least to me, because it highlights just how little time ten months in a place turns out to be.
So, though all of my spare time was being devoted to putting up all the posts about our trip through Sicily and the Mezzogiorno, when Anna suggested a couple of weeks ago that we go to Lucca for the day - we jumped on the chance.
Lucca is a small town in northern Tuscany with a heavy tourist presence. They're famed for having 3 kilometers of completely intact medieval wall circling the town, which you can bike or walk.
We arrived on one of the many daily trains from Florence (though Anna just about gave us a heart attack when she came bobbing up at 9:08 for the train, which left at... 9:08) and strolled through town in the direction of Piazza Santa Maria, where there are several shops that will rent you a bike by the hour or the day for reasonable rates.
Lucca wasn't immediately captivating. In fact, the narrow streets, lined with tall houses in varying shades of yellow and cream with green or brown shutters, looked to us like they could easily be Florentine - with the exception of this small canal.
We reached the bike shop, and I attempted to conduct the rental transaction in Italian - but when I didn't understand the Italian word for "lock", the shopkeeper switched immediately to fluent, British-accented English. It felt strange to be back in an area where English is heard perhaps more often than Italian.
We got on our bikes and rode up a small hill to the walls, which are wide and planted with trees. It's basically a park on a ridge that happens to go all the way around town and be built of brick. Very nice for biking, especially as my expertise in that area is pretty limited. (Hey, I grew up in Chicago, and our bikes got stolen. Out of our locked garage. Three times, I think.)
Being on the walls gives you a pretty view of Lucca's churches and streets and parks.
We made it all the way around the walls without running over any of the tiny dogs or preschoolers out for walks with their owners or parents, and entered traffic on a busy street heading out of town towards a nearby park. I was really worried to be biking in Italian traffic, but people stayed well clear of me - I think they could tell that I might lose control of my bike and fall down in front of them at any moment.
The park was actually a very long, narrow strip of green north of town along the banks of the Fuime Serchio - the Serchio River. The path started out paved, but this quickly turned into a gravel surface - difficult on the legs and arms, at least for me. Beautiful views, though.
The weather was perfect for being on a bike - not so cold that your whole face chaps, but not so warm that you melt into a puddle.
Our free little map implied that there would be three bridges we would pass (not counting the major road that we used to reach the park) that would cross the river, and we resolved to bike to the last of these and cross there, coming back on the opposite side.
We stopped for a picnic after 45 minutes or so, stuffing our faces with marinated artichokes, panini, and fruit as well as enjoying some Ritz crackers Anna found cheaply in a market. It's been a while since I've had Ritz! No wine, though, for those of you who are fairly sure we're alcoholics.
After yummy lunch, we got back on our bikes and passed the second bridge, which turned out to be limited to train traffic. While we were dickering about whether we could walk our bikes across it without dying hideously, a train thundered past. We decided to continue on. Husbear got a great picture there, though.
The third bridge, we didn't find until we had taken our city bikes down what basically amounted to a scree hill, through a large mud field, and along an extremely rocky pockmarked road. This was when we discovered that the third bridge was actually the main autostrada - not particularly conducive to dinky bike traffic. No choice but to go back along the cratered road, through the mudfield, and up the rocky slope.
We traveled back along the gravel path,
until we got back to that first bridge and crossed over. The other side was more crowded, with people out for early afternoon walks with their dogs and families. Some small children were learning to ride bikes.
The ride back to town went swimmingly - it's so much easier to travel along with traffic than against it! We returned our bikes and paid up (not too bad, 20 euros for two bikes for four hours) and went for a walk around town.
We admired the twinkly Byzantine-style mosaic on the front of the Chiesa di San Frediano. I was reminded strongly of the mosaics we saw when we were in Palermo, though this one is 200 years younger.
Unfortunately, they were closed, so we couldn't go in to see the della Robbia altarpieces (that's the Tuscan ceramics house that decorated just about everything in this area - best known for their white faces on bright blue backgrounds).
Our next stop was at the Piazza Anfiteatro, which was built along the outlines of the town's Roman Amphitheater. Hence the name. It's a big oval, and interesting for its shape, but not much else.
But, as you know if you've looked through some of our other posts, our favorite thing to do in a new town is to sniff out the local food specialty. Here in Lucca, it's a sweet biscuit bread studded with raisins called buccellato. Lonely Planet directed us to Piazza San Michele to a pasticceria called Taddeucci for the best.
It's sold in loaves. Most of the time when we buy bread in Italy, they are happy to sell us portions of a loaf, but here we had to buy the whole thing.
These look overcooked, but I think they were supposed to be that way. The interior reminded me a little bit of an American biscuit (not buttermilk), with a strong aniseed flavor and lots of tasty raisins. They weren't the nicest people in there, but they did make good bread.
We munched on our loaf and walked over to check out the piazza's namesake - the Chiesa di San Michele in Foro. It has a very fancy Romanesque facade.
I'm not sure what was going on around here in the past that caused the parish to print a sign in four languages!
It was starting to get dark, and the streets were packed with people. We decided to return to another pasticceria we had seen earlier, to stack their buccellato up against Taddeucci's.
This one was stickier, with a less assertive crust and a more muted anise bite. I liked Taddeucci's better - this one was good, but a little ho-hum.
After checking out some menus (and the pitiful state of our wallets after a one-month trip!) the decision was made to return to Florence for dinner at chez Pants. Most of the menus we saw were pretty sad, to be honest - the same few dishes, over and over. This is sort of a truism about everywhere with a large tourist presence - restaurants want to draw tourists in with the local dishes, but it makes for a kind of paralyzing sameness everywhere. I'm sure some of these chefs want to play around with farro soup, which we saw on every single menu, but they may feel like they can't or they may figure why bother, as it's all tourists anyway.
We walked back to the train station to catch a train back to Florence. Husbear got a picture of the nighttime walls on our way.
I thought Lucca was nice, but it wasn't the amazing place I had been hoping for. Even in January, the streets were absolutely packed with tourists, and we couldn't figure out why. I suppose part of the reason is its inclusion in Rick Steves' traveler's bible. All in all, though, we didn't see anything to make us really want to get back there. Though biking the walls was a nice diversion.
After arriving at Santa Maria Novella, we said goodbye to Anna and made our way home. Husbear popped open a jar of pistachio sauce we had bought in Sicily and carried all the way across the South, and threw together a tasty pasta dish with some cooked chickpeas he had around and a farro spaghetti. (Farro is a pretty common grain around here - it's called spelt in English. Kind of barley-like.) Since we had had a big day of exercise, I succeeded in talking him into putting a poached egg on top of the pasta.
A very good pasta dish, though Husbear was disappointed that the pistachios had been cut heavily with almonds and didn't have a strong pistachio flavor. Whatever, I thought it was delicious.
And the next morning, Husbear decided to toast the rest of our buccellato from Taddeucci and serve it as part of a Waffle House inspired dish - scrambled eggs with cheese (tomino, in this case, a white cheese - that bright yellow is all egg yolk, baby!) and hash browns. There was a bit of a hash brown malfunction, causing the potatoes to sog up a little. Frustrated Husbear, happy potato-eating girlie.
Tomorrow, my aunt comes into town with two of her friends - and we're giving them a walking tour of Florence! I have to go bone up on my history.
girlie
