Two Lucca Homeboys

November 3, 2022

Lucca, Italy

Today we left Volterra and traveled to Lucca. We switched from vehicle to train in Pisa and bought our train tickets from one of these ticket machines.

It was quick and easy and we avoided the long line at the ticket counter.

We are staying at A Palazzo Busdraghi - Residenza d’Epoca. I think it means “You must schlep your bags up two flights of stairs to reach the lobby.” It’s a good thing we don’t have much luggage.

Our window looks out over one of the main streets, via Fillungo. It is narrow and it feels as though one could reach across and touch the yellow pastel wall across the street, but it’s not actually that close.

I was a little concerned to see two pairs of earplugs in our room, provided by the hotel, but we didn’t really need them.

Earplugs and keys to large wooden doors from street into courtyard, plus key to inner door rom courtyard into hotel. Room key is a plastic card with a chip. 

Our hotel started out as 13th-century palace. You enter a courtyard through enormous - and heavy - doors, pass an ancient well, and go up a narrow stairway to the lobby.

There are only eight rooms in the hotel. The original palace was much larger, and the building now contains private apartments on other levels, in addition to the hotel.

Our room has a high, coved ceiling with a stenciled panel painted in the center. This detail adds a lot to the feeling of stepping back in time to another age.

We went to a little cafe nearby for lunch. We tried a local specialty called tordelli. It was basically a home-made-style meat ravioli with meat sauce.

The tordelli was good, but on the heavy side. I couldn’t finish it.

After lunch we decided to start the Rick Steves self-guided Lucca walking tour. We started at the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro. This was once the site of a large Roman amphitheater. After various iterations, it is now a large, sunny, circular piazza enclosed by shops, galleries, and cafes on the ground level, and by apartments on the upper levels.

The outside of the ring shows the remnants of some of the ancient arches.

Next we saw the church of San Frediano. It was built in 1112 in the Romanesque style, with a beautiful mosaic on top. The mosaic looks brand new. Romanesque architecture is massive, thick-walled, and sturdy, with rounded arches.

We returned to Via Fillungo and passed many inviting shops selling leather goods, fashionable clothing, cosmetics, and upscale food. We also passed a five-story “tower house,” and soon thereafter, a 14th-century tower house with a large clock on one side. These tower houses once were very common in Lucca and other Tuscan towns. They were accessed by wooden stairs or ladders on the outside. There were no interior connections between floors. They were safer when a town was under attack.

At this point we decided to finish the walk tomorrow. We went back to our hotel to get ready for an evening of opera.

The opera program took place in an old church. Once again, the acoustics were excellent. No microphones were necessary.The program consisted of works by local composers, Puccini and Verdi. A pianist accompanied a soprano and a tenor. The tenor was fantastic. I thought the soprano was very loud and shrill. She actually made the bones in my ears vibrate - in an uncomfortable way. But Ken thought she was very good. I was glad we had a chance to go. It was a really wonderful experience to hear the two hometown composers in such an atmospheric setting, despite numerous instances of bad behavior by members of the audience.

Today’s color is pastel yellow.