Pisa, part 3

Oct 11, 2005

On Saturday we had decided to leave Pisa and explore some of the area. Mum and Dad wanted to go back to Florence as they’d only spent half a day there on their bus tour of Italy. Chris and I went there on our honeymoon last year so decided to find somewhere new. I’d heard that Lucca was nice and since it was only half an hour away we got the train there.

Lucca is really nice, it’s a very small town completely surrounded by thick walls. The walls are thick enough to drive a car round – although they don’t. There probably are extensive suburbs now but we didn’t go round those. We walked along the walls for a while – there were some horse chestnut trees which were turning wonderful autumn colours, people on bikes and joggers. Then we found a tourist information office and bought a map, the town has lots and lots of towers, we picked out the biggest and made plans to climb it, there is also an old roman amphitheatre, now a “square” surrounded by shops, so we headed there first.

We spent the whole day wandering round and exploring, we went in a few shops, climbed the clock tower, explored the walls a bit more and ate and drank very well. I’m pretty sure we’ll go back there sometime in the future.

We had arranged to have our evening meal at Lucca and then meet up back at the hotel as it advertised Jazz on a Saturday night. By 10.00 there was no sign of it though so we had a few drinks and an early night.