Friday 7 October, today we were due to visit both Lucca and Pisa by local train so at about 10 o’clock we all trooped down to the railway statin for the half hour trip to Lucca. The morning included cycle hire to ride around the walled town. We decided not to do this, preferring to walk and explore places on foot. The town walls are back filled with soil and have a wide road running all the way round.
At various locations there are fortified gateways through the wall which today let the traffic in and out.
One of the first thing that struck us when we entered the town and climbed the ramp to the top of the walls were these pair of statues of a man with a suitcase. I can’t find any information about these on the internet. As you can see the torso of the men is missing completely, the tree is behind the statue, not in front.
On instructions were to meet Kate in the main square at lunch time as we had a communal lunch organised at Vecchia Trattoria Buralli in another part of town.
We really enjoyed looking around Lucca and at lunchtime told Kate that we would spend the rest of the day there and not visit Pisa with her and the rest of the group.
One of the first places we visited was The Cathedral of San Martino where we bought a 2 day ticket to visit the Belltower, Museum, Church of Saints Giovanni and Reparata with Baptistery and archaeological area.
In the Cathedral is a carving of laria del Caretto with her dog at her feet, the base is showing signs of stress now, this was carved by Jacopo della Quercia.
Next to the Cathedral is a modern building housing a museum and one of their exhibits is a model of the Cathedral itself. As you can see access to the bell town is completely separate from the main building
The ticket also included access to the bell tower with 227 steps to the top, once up there the views are breath taking looking out across the town.
Our next visit was to the Church of Saints Giovanni and Reparata and bell tower in the photograph below. This was originally Lucca’s old Cathedral and is now an arts centre and museum.
The steps up this tower were a bit different being all open steel ones attached to the wall. Again the views were spectacular with a clear blue sky.
Entering the church the first thing I noticed was the floor which looked like wooden parquet, the reason for this soon became obvious, they had excavated the original floor and foundations to expose the foundations and mosaics from the 2nd century BC.
Lucca not only has, like most old walled towns, very narrow streets it also has some spectacular buildings. This is the Piazza San Michele almost in the centre of the town.
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As the afternoon wore on we felt we should be heading homeward, so returned to the railway station to buy our tickets to Montecatini, Montecatini is about half way between Lucca and Florence, it was just on 5pm and the train sitting on platform 5 was the train to Florence and about to leave. We rushed under the underpass and just managed to get on board before the train left> 4 stations along which should have been our stop the announcement said Montecarlo. We were on the wrong line to Florence, so we hopped off, planning to get the next train back to Lucca and then the right one home, but as our train pulled out so did the one to Lucca. The station is only 2 platforms, all the station buildings being long closed up. Outside the station building on the carpark sat 5 very elderly ladies and one man on white plastic chairs. Needless to say they didn’t speak a word of English, but they did summon a younger lady living in the old station who did. Taxi here, no chance. The only thing I could do was ring Kate, the tour manager who got the hotel to send a taxi for us. It all added to the holiday.
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