Pisa and Lucca: Lovely Day

Wow. This past week has been crazy, and I have a lot to write about. I’m dividing it between a bunch of posts; this one is for Friday.

We don’t have classes on Fridays. This is great because it gives us more opportunities to travel on the weekends. Last weekend, as I said, we went to Florence. This weekend is the Palio (a giant inter-contrada horserace that has been going on for the past 500ish years, I’ll go into detail in the next post), so we were all staying in town. However, we decided to take a day trip to nearby Pisa and Lucca.

This may be my favorite thing we’ve done so far. We only traveled with about half the program (my housemates and five other girls), and the group was relaxed, happy, and completely willing to go with the flow. We swapped stories on the train, mostly about our childhoods, but also past travels, our families, and our friends from home. We caught a connecting train in Empoli, and got off in Pisa. The next train to Lucca wasn’t for another two hours, so we went in search of the leaning tower.

Others of the group, having done this trip on the first weekend, had informed us that Pisa was sketchy and a walk through, with the leaning tower the only think worth seeing. Most of my travel companions deemed in “janky”. I loved it. I’m not sure why, there was just an extremely pleasant feeling in the air. It was relaxing and exciting at the same time. I wish I could have spent more time there

We made our way across the city and found the leaning tower, which was much smaller and felt much closer than I expected. Maybe it was the quality of the air, but it seemed like I could pick it up like a toy (I couldn’t of course, but it was about half the height I expected). I thought it was charming. After taking the standard tourist optical illusion pictures, we made our way back to the train station, to continue on to Lucca.

Lucca is a small walled town in the north of Tuscany, and absolutely beautiful. The landscaping reminded me of the chateaus I saw when I was in France, or something out of a Jane Austen novel: quietly elegant and graceful, and very human. It was a cloudy day, and cool (thank goodness. It’s been so hot lately I can barely function) with a light wind. We rented bikes and rode them around the top of the wall. It was SO FUN! we were all shouting and laughing in our excitement. The top of the wall is a sort of park, with a well kept walk/bikeway, lined on both sides with trees. It was so pretty, and from it we could see most of the city. It didn’t feel as old as Siena, or quite as Italian (it had a feel I generally associate with England and France), but it was absolutely lovely. We kept stopping to take pictures. On a whole, I think it’s the best 3 euro I’ve spent so far.

After returning the bikes, we got lunch at a small restaurant in a square, where we found excellent eggplant parmesan, and the first risotto of the trip. Lunch was followed by desert at a patisserie, and general wanderings about the city. Minor shopping was done, along with much sightseeing, and when the time came to go back to the train station, we realized we had no idea where we were. We ended up going out the wrong gate, walked halfway around the city, and almost missed our train home. It was definitely an adventure, but the group remained in good spirits.

All in all, it was a completely delightful adventure, and one I would definitely recommend to anyone traveling in Tuscany.