Lucca

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Geo: 43.843, 10.508

5-7 May

Lucca is a lovely city, obviously much quieter than Florence and Venice but still plenty to see and do.

The city is surrounded by a wall used to protect it in war times. There is a road on top of the wall and the walk around it is 4km.

It poured all day on Sunday and the shops are closed so I walked most of the way around and called into the Lucca Gallery of Contemporary Art. There was a very strange exhibition on called Paint where the artist started on white canvas, colored the majority of it with black lines and then used different textures of white paint to cover it all. I think the aim was to use white as colour whereas we usually start with white and introduce other colours over it. I guess it was clever?!?!

I got home from dinner on Sunday night to find FIVE cats in the garden of the old palace where I am staying. They didn't like me at all and were probably strays - they were very big cats and a bit creepy. I couldn't even catch a photo.

A bit more about the B&B I'm at. It is a sixteenth century palace, Palazzo Bottini. I'm in an apartment which is a little larger and my bed is on a mezzanine. The ceilings are the original concrete arches. Walls are paper thin though and very noisy.

Today (Monday) is fine so I can walk around again. I have visited the Palazzo Pfanner owned by a surgeon and built in the 15th century. Beautiful palace and outstanding gardens. Scary surgical instruments on display though.

Not so keen on the food in Lucca. Traditional food consists of wild hare, boar, tripe, spelt. Therefore the pasta isn't as good. Going to try a stew tonight once I have been assured it is beef. (I had the beef stew and it was Yummo).

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Comments

[celine]

tripe? Heeeeeeeeeeuuuuurkkkk. But I guess you should be open minded and try the local culinary???? Gourmet, delicatessen... you tell us. I ll take your word for it.