La Bella Lucca

Early start this morning. A pity, because I'd had my worst night's sleep to date on the trip: indigestion, spasmodic pain in my achilles tendon, and being too tired to sleep, combined with the knowledge that I had to be up early so I had to go to sleep NOW... not a good recipe. Stephen woke me as promised at 7, and then again at 10 past. Still, plenty of time for a shower and breakfast, in order to go out at 8.15.

We were catching an intercity bus from somewhere near the end of the tram line - the other end, away from the city, where we'd never been. The booking confirmation email said we had to be there 15 minutes before the bus left, which was due to be 9.10am, but we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to find the place, the right bus stop, and so on. We actually arrived about 30 minutes early, and found it was a whole bus terminal, with a decent café attached. So while we waited we had a coffee and tried to retrieve the booking barcode from my phone. But the damn thing wouldn't come up. It was an attachment to an email, but it wouldn't download. There was a QR code (?? - one of those square 3D sort of bar codes) but that wouldn't appear as an image... we spent the full half hour trying to find different ways of downloading or opening or transferring these files, and nothing worked. But the wording on the confirmation was that "You must show..." these files on your phone or a printed document. The bus finally arrived about 10 minutes late, and we waited till everyone else (about 6 others) had got on before explaining the problem to the driver. He asked my name, and the other passenger's name, and we were there on the list of course because the booking was after all legit, and he tapped the names on his iPad, and that was it. We were in. Emergency over.

Tree nursery

So , we were on the bus. We were travelling to Lucca, a trip of about 1 hour 25 minutes along the freeway, so mostly quite boring industrial or commercial scenery, but there were some tree nurseries that I liked. The destination had been suggested by my cousin in an email exchange while we were planning the itinerary, and it seemed like a good idea. (Although, I thought the other day, it could seem a bit arrogant: we have 3.5 days in one of the most beautiful and famous cities in the world, overflowing with art and history, and what do we do? Take a day-trip out of there.)

Lucca is a small town that still has buildings dating from the 6th century, as well as Roman remains. It has a full city wall that is intact and walkable, and the town that is inside the wall is a rabbit warren of medieval streets and squares.  There are lots of shops and cafes and restaurants, and a very popular place for visitors, being just so attractive. There were a few markets in some of the squares, so we (I) did some shopping. We even donated at the Red Cross tent. We had lunch  at the Anfiteatro, which used to be, obviously, a Roman amphitheatre, but was allowed to fall into ruin. In the 1830's, however, a local architect developed it into residences and a market square, and now it's a delightfully atmospheric oval of shops and restaurants. After lunch we kept walking, to find a particular villa that allowed visitors to walk through, because of all the places we've visited, none has shown what life might be like in one of these fabulous buildings - they're all too full of art.

Here are some pics of Lucca (but the day continues afterwards. Keep scrolling.)

11th century church (I think, from memory)

One of Lucca's iconic towers, this one has oak trees growing on top

Some of the original walls of the amphitheatre

Piazza Anfiteatro

We left by train at 15.39, to get back to Florence for a 6.30pm booking for the Duomo. The train was a slow one, and took longer than the bus, but it's much nicer scenery than a freeway. And the bus didn't run at the right time for us. I was dead tired, and dozed for the first half of the trip or more. But I was awake later, and ready to go for the final part of the day when we arrived back at 5.22, exactly on time.

Now we had to make our way across to the Duomo. Encouraged by yesterday's experience at the Gallery Accademia, we thought we'd try lining up earlier, in case they let us in. We asked at the ticket office if we could go early, and she said they might let us in 15 minutes early, so it seemed worth a try. Especially since our other idea, visiting the cathedral itself, was not a goer: it had already closed. So in this case, the ticket for the Duomo did actually mean the Dome itself, not the Cathedral, as I'd hoped. I wasn't sure I really wanted to climb the Dome, and Stephen was even less enthused. But anyway, we headed over to see how things would pan out. The queue was not too short, but not very long. We were looking at our watches as the line shrank, but when we got to the front, at 6.13, there were quite a few people just hanging round at the entrance doing nothing. And it turned out that these were all people with 6.30 bookings. The man checking tickets called out for others with 6.00pm tickets, but there was no one. Still, we couldn't go in.

Duomo Cupola (back); Cathedral (middle) 

and Baptistry (front)

Until 6.29, and then the line started moving again. We were able to see the interior of the Cathedral as we went in, and it wasn't worth a special visit after all. Maybe they had no more money after they marbelled the outside, but the interior was mostly plaster and cement. So we followed the person in front, and went up the stairs. It started out okay: just 3 -5 steps at a time turning right angles in between. We did stop for a pant a couple of times, I'm not embarrassed to admit. But then it became a spiral staircase, and that was harder: the right leg was fine but the left hip had to swivel a little at every single step, so that started to hurt a bit. Finally we got to the narrow walkway around the interior of the cupola, where you can see the ceiling artwork more clearly, although still behind Perspex. At this point I thought there was a choice of going up or down, and I was quite happy to be going down, but in fact, the only way was up. This was a bit of a worry, but it turned out to be not all the way to somewhere: after a while there was a choice between continuing up (I don't know how far or where to) or taking another quarter-turn around the cupola, right at the edge of the painting level and then finally going downwards. Guess

Cupola

which we chose.

Florence street, evening

Duomo interior, from cupola

We emerged into the evening light and kept walking, now looking for somewhere to sit and eat. We didn't want to be too close to the tourist squares, but we couldn't find our way out of the designer area. Any restaurant that shares its street with Prada and Fendi and Tommy Hilfinger is not our kind of restaurant. Especially when all we wanted was a sandwich. We finally found a little side-street panini place that was only a little more expensive than necessary, and we ate there. But it had been a long day, and these panini were quite hard work, so we had the second halves wrapped to take home, and set off to find a tram stop for the line that goes near the flat.

The public transport systems here have been pretty good, I have to say. Buses and trams, and subways in some cities (Rome, at least). It's 1.50Euro  for a ticket that lasts 90 minutes over every means of transport - although the bus home from the hill last night cost 2.50, and I assume that was because it was later at night. Tonight we left town at 8.01, and came to our stop at 8.16, and then it's about 8 minutes' walk back to the flat. Showers to relax the body after its workout, finish the sandwich for dinner, do this. Stephen's just gone to bed, because it's finally not too early. But he still thinks I might need to use my phone alarm to get up at 7 in the morning. He doesn't trust himself to be awake at that hour.

Florence from Cupola stairwell