Lucca: just another beautiful Tuscan town. Lucca is west of Florence, a little northeast of Pisa, not too far from the coast. The old city is surrounded by a wall and fortifications on top of which is a road or path about two-and-a-half miles long and circles the city. It is a great place to walk or ride a rental bike or just sit and watch the people go by. It looked like a great place to jog too. If we had stayed in Lucca another day, I would have run a few laps. Well, I at least would have considered it.

There is a large plaza off the main shopping street which they call Piazza Anfiteatro. It had its origin as a 10,000 seat Roman Amphitheatre but it sort of disappeared over the years. Now all that's left are a few arches and a big, nearly round plaza where the amphitheatre used to be. There are also plenty of shops, caffés, restaurants and of course, lots of churches.

After collecting the ingredients for a picnic lunch from various shops, we rented bikes and circled the wall looking for a place to picnic. We found a nice secluded spot off a path away from the main path. We enjoyed our lunch until the local junior high kids started running laps around our little path. Oh well.

Puccini was born in Lucca in 1858. Allegedly he frequented Di Simo Caffé and today his works are performed nightly at the Basilica Santo Giovanni.

As I mentioned on the previous page, John & Jan went to the nightly Puccini concert Tuesday. Tonight it was our turn. They put on a short "opera" every night which features pieces from Puccini operas as well pieces by some of his contemporary composers and maybe some not so contemporary. The night we attended the show featured Puccini as well as Mozart sung by a young man and woman accompanied by a single piano (with a guy playing it!) It was very enjoyable. The acoustics in the church are very good. And it was short!

We met John and Jan for wine before the opera and for dinner after. We went to Trattoria da Leo, a place we had walked by a couple times and had made a reservation. They  seemed to be doing a great business, the menu looked interesting and they are recommended by Rick Steves. Well, they were doing a great business. At 8:30 (early in Italy) they were out of several menu items (the ones we wanted), the service was rushed and the food we got wasn't very great. Perhaps we hit them on a bad night.

On the bright side, we had a great time with John & Jan (ask John about the toilet in the enoteca) and a great time in Lucca. It is a place to which I would return.

The next morning, instead of driving inside the walls, we dragged our bags to the car and it was off to Cinque Terre!