Lucca

Nicole, Rachel and I went to Lucca today. It is about a one-hour train ride from Florence, and is quite charming! The original walls around the city are still in-tact (and quite thick!), but have been made into a promenade, on which you can walk the entire city.


It's quite amazing, and filled with trees - it's like a tree-lined (pedestrian) road encircling the city, and it's really a neat way to experience it. The city center is also very pedestrian friendly, and many people ride and rent bikes to get around. The city has multiple piazzas, but the best (I think), is the Piazza del Mercato which is elliptical in shape due to the fact that it was built directly on top of a roman amphitheater.


The shopping is great, but the food wins out (hmm, how did you guess that with me. Beth - food?). Lucca is known for its yellow-colored noodles - the citizens of Lucca were more wealthy and could therefore afford to add eggs the dough for their noodles, hence the yellow color (thanks NME for the info!).


Lucca also has a good number of towers, which it successfully used to guard itself against Florence. Today, they make for amazing views of the region - the tower we climbed even had trees on top. In fact, this town was very "green" - green in the sense that they incorporated plantings and trees very well into the city, and was such a great accent to the earthy colors of the buildings. I would definitely like to return to Lucca before leaving in December.