Pisa & Lucca, Italy
/(May 9th - May 10th, 2015)
We took the train from Monterosso to Pisa, dropped off our bags and set out to go to the highest rated sandwich shop in town before taking silly pictures with the leaning tower. We got lost on our way and after circling the same block twice we finally decided to ask for help. As we approached a guy on the street, he chuckled and said “I was wondering when you were going to ask for directions, you’ve seemed lost for a while.” He pointed us in the right direction and we arrived to the sandwich shop in no time. Each sandwich was only 5 euro and they were delicious! After eating, it was time to do our mandatory leaning tower of Pisa pictures. We started with your typical holding up the tower pictures and then got more creative with Spartan kicking the tower. It’s actually harder than it looks to get the right angle!
From Pisa, we hopped on the train and headed into Lucca where we spent one night. Lucca is one of Italy’s most impressive fortress cities (encircled by a perfectly intact wall), yet it hasn’t seen war since 1430. We loved Lucca. The city was so charming with many open squares, markets and shops and we ended up staying in a B&B that opened up into an amphitheater piazza. We didn’t know ahead of time there was a music festival going on so it was probably much more crowded than normal, but still had a small town charm.
We spent some time exploring the city before getting a last minute dinner reservation at the #1 restaurant in town. Allasteria was absolutely amazing! We started with some complimentary cheesy, creamy, nutty appetizers (neither of us enjoyed them), then had a phenomenal wild board ragu with homemade pasta, cheese and pepper pasta (quickly becoming Allen’s go to pasta choice), steak with vegetables, and finished off with three mini chocolate cakes with lemon sorbetto. It was our best Italian meal yet and we left completely full and so thankful we were able to get in on such late notice.
After dinner we walked back to our place to find a DJ set up in the piazza with lights, loud music, and a crowd enjoying the free entertainment. We sat down at one of the restaurants in the piazza to have a glass of wine and enjoy the entertainment before joining in on the dancing ourselves. We didn’t know a majority of the songs but we stayed out there dancing for about 2 hours. After the DJ played a streak of several songs we didn’t recognize we headed back to our B&B, but continued to enjoy the music from our porch that opened up into the Piazza. Of course right as we left, the DJ started playing all the American hits we would have loved to dance to!
The next morning we had breakfast and set off to climb up one of the few remaining towers in Lucca to get a good birds eye view of the city. It was well worth the rickety stairs. We got some great views of the city and surrounding hillsides. Since we had such a short stay in Lucca we rented bikes so we could ride around the city and explore at a faster pace. Our bike ride really made us fall in love with the city. We rode on the wall that fully encloses the town and enjoyed seeing people of all ages, walking, biking, running, roller blading, sitting with friends on benches, laying in the grass, soaking up the sun and letting their dogs run around, had sandwiches for lunch, and finished with the most expensive/fancy affogato we’ve had so far in Italy.
We were sad to leave, but are really glad we added Lucca to our itinerary and plan to come back one day to further enjoy the great food, gelato, charm, and people of Lucca. It was a relaxing 24 hours, which is just what we needed before heading to our next stop: Rome.
