Pisa and Lucca

Leaning Tower of Pisa

We had our first free weekend, and decided to stay in Italy and explore the wonderful area we get to live in. Friday, a group of 5 of us hopped on a train to Pisa, where we walked about 30 minutes to see the infamous leaning tower. Along the way, we followed Rick Steves' self-guided tour, step-by-step, which informed us of the history of where we were, stopping at each spot along the way. It took us a good bit of time, once we stopped laughing about the large amount of tourists holding their hands up and leaning, to find the right side and angle to take the picture at. We'd all seen so many pictures of others with the tower, but it wasn't as easy as it looks, and we still think we did it wrong, not using the 'get on ground level' technique that would've added the cool proportion effect. We snapped a few shots with the tower, and headed back to the train station. For the second time that morning, we were practically running to catch the train, but making sure that we got our tickets validated this time. On the first train ride, in our frantic rush to catch it, we didn't realize we needed to validate our tickets, and got a fine once on board.

We took the train to the beautiful town of Lucca, where walking into the walls of the town elicited such beauty, making the history I was reading about the town become so real. It is Italy's most impressive fortress city, keeping out traffic as well as the stress of the modern world. With no single monumental sight to attract tourists, it's simply a uniquely human and undamaged, never bombed city with Romanesque churches from the 12th century on nearly every corner. We ate a wonderful home-cooking, Mel's diner style trattoria, where I got the fixed price special of the day, including Pasta with pine nuts and tomatoes for the first course, veal with potatoes for the second, water, espresso, and wine. It was an awesome meal, which ended by a surprise visit by the rest of the guys who came from Florence.

Biking the ramparts of Lucca

We all went to rent bikes to bike the ramparts! These Renaissance walls are Lucca's most remarkable feature, protecting them for 2,000 years, beginning when the town invested one third of their income for more than a century to construct the walls. The walls were turned into a fine city park, stretching 2.5 miles around the perimeter of the city. It was so much fun to bike around with everyone, seeing the beautiful view and monuments surrounding us, while looking over the city on the inside. It was definitely much better than walking, and a great experience to get to do something different. We came back to dinner at the restaurant next to our apartment, where the owner lives and keeps all his supplies in the basement of our building. Our waiter was an American who came to study abroad for a semester, met a friend, came back to visit often, and now is dating her brother, living in Florence, and working at his parents' restaurant! She said she never actually made the decision to move here, rather, all of her stuff just gradually accumulated amongst her visits, that she just kind of stayed one day. Doesn't sound too bad to me! (kidding mom and dad...partially)

Ciao,

Tarra