Advertisement
Published: October 3rd 2005
Walls of Lucca
Can you believe that two lines of trees are growing on the walls around Lucca? It's basically now a very beautiful park that surrounds the city. I couldn't get over how wide the walls were.(Posted Oct. 2nd by Kim)
We started out our second day in Florence by going to the Pitti Palace, a museum with some famous paintings (including some by Raphael), lots of not-so-famous paintings, sculptures, and some VERY beautiful and amazing mosaics. While the Uffizi has more famous works, we chose the Pitti because Joe and I were more interested in the mosaics, and the fact that it had a shorter line helped! I had always thought mosaics were the small tiles on a floor, but these were on tables and in beautiful designs with no space between the tiles that were all different shapes, and they would even choose stones with variation in shades to represent shadows. The top is smooth as the pieces fit together perfectly The mosaics were definitely worth seeing in person because these pictures do not do them justice!
After the museum Wilson found a little shop that he’d been to before where they still made mosaics like the ones we’d seen. We were disappointed that there was no one working there anymore to show us how it was done, but after hearing our disappointment the owner’s son locked up the front door of the
Courtyard of Hostel
We didn't spend much time here, but it was nice to have a quiet courtyard inside our hostel. shop and took us into the back workroom to show us how they “cut” the mosaics with wire. He was very kind to show us, especially since he knew we couldn’t really afford anything in the shop.
After lunch we hopped on a train for a short ride to Lucca, a walled city close to Pisa (i.e.- the leaning tower). The city was formed as a Roman colony in 180 B.C. and the streets follow a rectangular grid because of its beginnings, but the main attraction is the huge walls that would protect the city while under attack. The walls are bricked, but there’s so much earth behind them that it’s like a big flat-topped hill around the city. We rented bikes to ride around the wall and city. It was nice to have a less hectic day to break up the hectic pace we’d kept.
We also shopped some more at another street market, although it was much smaller than the one in Florence. We got a little turned around but finally made it to the part of the city that had once been a Roman amphitheater. Since the arena was there before the Italian city, the
No fish for the wealthy
This is a picture of the covered indoor walkway above a street in the historic downtown area of Florence. What is now an upscale shopping area over the main bridge used to be a very smelly fish market, and the wealthier citizens of Florence built these walkways so they didn't have to mingle with the commoners and the smelly fish... houses were built around it. Now all that’s left is a big open courtyard ellipse with several restaurants. We had an interesting dinner at a restaurant where it turned out they were “out” of half of the menu…little bit weird.
After dinner we rode back to Florence and enjoyed another evening at our hostel where we tried to rest before the craziness of Rome! The only trouble we had with the hostel was that the office was only open for about 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the late afternoon, so we had to wait for the office to open the next morning and missed the earliest train out of Florence. Turns out none of us complained too much about sleeping in an extra 30 minutes, though, and Tanya & I enjoyed getting our typical morning chocolate croissants. I even discovered I like coffee on this trip, especially cappachino (with cream and sugar, of course). Tanya & Wilson usually had café au lait when they could find it. Believe it or not, most mornings we left our lodging by 7 or 8 am, so we enjoyed our café !!
-Kim
Advertisement
Tot: 0.048s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0203s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
