Lucca and Pisa

Lucca was one of my favorite cities out of the ones we visited. It was smaller and much less touristy, though there were certainly many tourists around. It was surrounded by the old town wall, which made it nice because you couldn't get too lost. The best part was the Bed and Breakfast we stayed at. I had found it on tripadvisor originally and it had gotten really good reviews. It was in an old apartment that the couple who owned it had bought and fixed up. It was obviously old-wooden doors, pull-down toilet flusher, very old light switches. I loved it. The owners were very kind, and so was another woman by the name of Nattaria (sorry about the spelling). The best part though, was the breakfast. We were so amazed the first morning. First we were asked what we wanted to drink-tea, coffee, cappuccino, juice. Cappuccino? Of course. Then it just seemed like they kept bringing more and more. Each morning we got a basket of very hard toast and some kind of cookie-bread thing. The rest different. One morning we had strawberry cake, another lemon cake, chocolate chip muffin, pecorino cheese (so good), prosciutto, walnuts, yogurt (also awesome, as yogurt seems to be in Europe), and more.. Another great thing about breakfast was that it was on the terrace and you had a nice view of the buildings in Lucca.

The first day we explored Lucca. It was beautiful in the morning-sunny and warm. You can walk on the town walls so that's exactly what we did. It's more like a park up there. On the corners there are picnic tables and such and the path is more like two park paths-one for bikes and the other a small footpath. We went in a couple churches and climbed up two towers-one was the clock tower and I'm not sure what significance the other had. They were both great views though. We also went to the  botanical gardens because we got in with our towers ticket, but that wasn't exciting at all.

Our trouble in most places we visited was deciding on a place to eat. We wanted something authentic, not too touristy, but also not expensive. The second night in Lucca we took forever to decide and it just didn't end up meeting our expectations. I had four cheese pasta-which was good, just not that good. Overall in Italy I wasn't overly impressed with the food. It was all really good, but I had heard it was great and different. Maybe we just never found the right place... We did have gelato twice that day to compensate though. :)

The second full day in Lucca we took a train to Pisa which was about an hour away. Basically all we did was go to the Piazza with the tower. We bought a ticket to the tower (very expensive) and you also got into the cathedral. Both were nice but not overly impressive. The view from the tower was not as good as the towers in Lucca in my opinion. Yes, I know the other towers weren't "leaning." It was prettty cool walking up the leaning tower. The one really neat thing was how worn the stairs were from so many people walking up them. We basically just ate lunch after and then went home after that. (Later I'll rant about Italian street signs..) We both got calzones for lunch and they were very good. Oh, one thing we did see in Pisa was a very impressive man dressed as a statue. First, he looked pretty realistic. He was one of the ones painted gold, so he looked like he was metal. And he was half sitting/standing, like a wall-sit almost but at an angle that looked more tiring. Anyway, I was impressed so I gave him some change and he pretended to kiss my hand. I also found a shop in Pisa where I bought a very coral colored skirt :)

The next morning we enjoyed our breakfast and then headed out to catch a train to Florence.