We left Bologna and our lovely hotel behind and made the drive to Lucca. We checked in and then headed into the old city, behind its massive and still-intact city walls. Lucca is a former Roman colony founded in 180BC and the ramparts were built in the 16th-17th century. The walkway on top of the walls/ramparts (about 10-12 metres wide) had been turned into parklands, and you could stroll or ride a bike along, while looking down either side. We walked along the top for a way, and then headed into the old city proper.
We wandered around the 11th century San Martino Duomo, but we had decided we weren’t going to go inside any of the duomos and churches of Lucca. We’d seen inside some very impressive ones, and we were on a time limit, so a walk around certain points of interest was on the cards for us instead. Lucca is the city of Puccini, and so everywhere we went, there were posters for concerts of his music. I must admit, it would have been lovely being inside one of these old churches listening to some classical music concerts.
We wandered through the Piazza Napoleone – his sister, Elisa Baciocchi, ruled Lucca from 1805-1815 and so this plaza has a big statue of her in it (with some lady, but it doesn’t say who her companion is). We made our way from there to San Michele in Foro, which is a church that stands on the site of the old Roman Forum in the city square. The front of the church has many twisted and carved columns, each one different to the rest, and it has a statue of the Archangel Michael on the top. ‘Its decoration is overwhelmingly pagan’ says our travel book, ‘except for the statue of Michael’.
We were starving, but it was that in-between time of 4pm(ish) and so we made our way to a little open bar, that just so happened to have snackies on the counter. A beer and a lemonade later, we had our fill of finger sandwiches, olives, and sausage thingys, so we moved on to Palazzo Pfanner. Herr Pfanner was the German guy who was elected (self-elected) beer maker for Lucca from the late 1600s, and this was his house. The entrance fee included a walk around the house, which was lined with (falling-apart) frescoes and furnished in period pieces. His son was a doctor, and very well regarded by the community, and so there were also lots of display cabinets with very early, and somewhat barbaric looking, surgical instruments. The garden was lovely though, and was lined with baroque statues of the Gods and Goddesses of Roman Mythology. We had come to see the garden really, the house was a mini-almost-bonus.
There was one more stop left on our walking tour of the old city – and that was the old roman amphitheatre, the Piazza del Anfiteatro. Slum housing clogged the piazza until 1830 when the ruler of the time ordered it to be cleared. It was then that the original shape was revealed. Many of the stones from the amphitheatre have been ransacked over the centuries, leaving only a handful of the original fragments in the buildings which surround it. They are all in a circular shape, and it’s a little bizarre standing in the centre of it all. Low archways at the piazza’s cardinal points mark where the beasts and gladiators would have entered the arena. These days, it’s all shops and restaurants, and so we had a cold drink and people watched for a little while, and then found a taxi back to the hotel.
We went looking for a restaurant recommended on Trip Advisor that was meant to be around the corner from our hotel, but when we found it, it turned out to be a dodgy looking place that the local teens were hanging around. We decided the restaurant at the hotel looked nice, so we went back there instead. This was probably one of the wisest food decisions we have made on our trip so far! The food was AMAZING. I know I have said ‘amazing food’ before, but this was really out of this world and not what we were expecting at all. Incredibly fresh seafood, done in imaginative ways – but the absolute best of the best were the desserts. Mark had chocolate soufflé – there are no words to describe it, so I won’t – look at the photos instead! I had crème brulee (see a pattern emerging in our eating habits?) but they didn’t just bring me one brulee, they brought me three different types! Again, see the photos!
So we have decided that we liked Lucca, particularly based on soufflés and brulees!
No comments:
Post a Comment