In Love with Lucca

We'd tried to visit Lucca once before in 2008 but hadn't managed to find anywhere outside the city walls to park, so we'd abandoned our plans and moved on elsewhere.

This trip, I was determined that we'd get to see it, so we arranged to stay here in a great B&B just a couple of hundred metres outside the city walls.

Lucca didn't disappoint at all and I completely fell for it, the moment I stepped through the Porta S. Maria. I had a great day wandering the narrow streets and weaving my way around the main sights.

The highlights for me were visiting Puccini's birthplace museum and seeing some of his letters and handwritten scores from his operas, and afterwards sitting on a stone bench outside the Mondadori bookshop, eating roast chestnuts, people-watching and chatting to an old man called Udo. He even gave me his business card so that we can carry on our conversation in letters, or more likely, given my halting Italian, postcards.

Lucca was lovely and warm and friendly and the fresh tomatoes on bruschetta we had at the local pizzeria were to die for. If tomatoes tasted that good back home, I would eat that every day!