Lovely Lucca

Lucca, Italy in Tuscany is easy to love, with good food, attractive buildings, and an elegant pace of life.

The city is surrounded by Renaissance city walls. Inside the walls are cobbled street, handsome piazzas, shady promenades, good shops. It reminded me of Sante Fe, New Mexico, not, of course in architecture but in the quality of life and the general vibe. 

We never planned to visit here. It was only on our radar as a backup plan and as it turned out, we needed a backup plan because we didn't like our original destination, The Cinque Terre. 

One of those scenic Cinque Terre towns. 

Despite the April rains the Cinque Terre towns were extremely crowded with tourists and hikers. We saw few if any locals. 
Your friends who loved their visit here a few years ago got to stroll on the romantic, beautiful Via dell'Amore which has been closed for a few years and has no plans to reopen in the near future. However, it is still listed as open in all the tourist guides. We felt cheated by the false advertising. 

A view from our boat trip

We do like to walk (we try for 5-8 miles a day every day) but at our age we prefer easier and level walks to steep mountains. The trails that are open in the Cinque Terre are both too crowded and too strenuous, on these hills.  So we took a short but lovely boat trip along the coast instead. One night here was plenty and Lucca was just a short train ride away.  

On that train ride we passed Carrera. Many famous sculptures are made of Carrera marble, as well as marble countertops.  Here are the marble mountains of Carrera. 

All that white stuff- Carrerra marble.

Back to Lucca. The city walls are an important feature here and surround the charming historic part of town. They are unusual in many ways. First of all the walls were designed by Leonardo de Vinci. It was originally built for defense (largely against their nearby rival, Florence) but once the walls lost their military importance they became a pedestrian promenade. When Italy united the government pulled down alls all over the country but Lucca, a wealthy and fashionable city said they wanted to keep them and had to pay to for the privilige of keeping their walls.

Not what you expect a city wall to look like, is it?  This 8 km wall was designed by Leonardo de Vinci and since it is so wide it is a park with walkways, trees, an occasional spot for picnics, and more.  It seemed like everyone in town walks/bikes/jogs on the walls all the time. 

You walk up to the walls on paths like this. There were numerous tunnels and rooms underneath the walls as shown below 

Ok. Enough photos of the walls. Here are some other Lucca photos. 

Puccini, the Italian opera composer, came from Lucca. That is his house in the back of us. 

I went horseback riding one day and we passed this village surrounded by olive groves. 

Isn't this the prettiest plate of ravioli you have ever seen? I forget the flavor. Maybe butternut squash?

We loved Lucca and would definitely return for a longer stay.