A Small Town

May 10, 2013 15:00

After Pisa, Ben, Heather and I headed up to Lucca to spend some time in the ancient medieval city. I didn't know too much about the town before going there, but I heard that it was a neat place to visit, so I was looking forward to checking it out.

Lucca is a small town slightly north of Pisa that is still surrounded by large Renaissance city walls. This characteristic is, in my opinion, the coolest part of the city. We walked around the wall for a bit, and it was great. The hilly landscape it overlooks is absolutely beautiful. I could see myself retiring in a place like Lucca, but I definitely could not stand to live there. The city just doesn't seem "real".

For such a small town, Lucca certainly has its fair share of churches and cathedrals. I'm also completely obsessed with the the Piazza Anfiteatro. The square is located in the central part of the city. We also got to hear a violin duo playing My Heart Will Go On believe it or not. Cliches aside, it was actually pretty cool.

We were going to head back to Florence before dinnertime, but it turns out that Ben was planning on getting a late train to visit a friend in Naples, so we opted to stay in Lucca for a couple more hours to give him company.

I was thrilled. We had dinner at a restaurant in the Piazza Anfiteatro and continued to explore the city. Believe it or not, at night, the grass surrounding the small moat around the Renaissance walls is covered with lightening bugs. I wish I could have captured the phenomena with a camera, but you'll have to take my word for it. It was pretty awesome. All-in-all, it was so nice to have a break from the "relatively busy" city of Florence. To date, this has been the best part of the trip so far.

To make a long story short, a couple of hours turned into four or five hours. We weren't really in any rush; we were just enjoying the quaint city of Lucca. But, we failed to realize that trains to Lucca do not run all night. They actually stop running around 11:30pm which is just about the time we got back to the train station. Yes, we were stuck.

The worst case scenario was sleeping in the train station and catching the earliest 5am train the next morning. The train station is small, but pretty clean and deserted, so it wouldn't have been too bad. But it turns out that there was a late-night bus that was passing through Lucca in route to Florence. Don't ask me how or why this happened – they probably have one running for stranded people like us – but it worked.

Also, the ticketing machines at the train stations suck. Ben didn't end up going to Naples because he couldn't get a ticket. I'm still not sure why. Believe me, we had plenty of time to try every combination – nothing was easy.

At any rate, we got back to Florence around 2:30am. I got to bed around 3:30am, but looking back on it, it was an awesome experience. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.