Italy Cycle Journal

Day 4 - Lucca

Beware - it's a long one...

Day 4 – May 16, 2005

Florence to Lucca

I’m kind of enjoying the whole “making notes in a notebook, then write about it later” thing I’m doing. Seems like a good plan and much easier than carrying my laptop around all day long. Plus, I have the benefit of letting my brain absorb stuff before I write about it.

In the morning, I walked around Florence for a bit longer. Then, around 10am, left the hotel in Florence and took all my luggage over to the train station to head to Lucca.

Before I left, Lance asked about my itinerary. When I told him where I was headed, he asked “Where’s Lucca?” to which I, of course, replied “She lives on the second floor.” Ah yes, the comedy never ends with me.

Couple final things about Florence – in particular, the hotel room. The room electricity can only be turned on by inserting your room key into a slot in the wall. Without that, the power in the room doesn’t work. Seems like a pretty good plan for saving on power costs when someone’s not in the room, but not ideal if you want to charge electrical devices while you’re out.

One other thing that was a bit annoying – the room had several mosquitoes (probably 4 or 5 over the course of the night). Don’t know where they were hiding, because I tried hunting them down but couldn’t seem to kill any until they were right on top of me. And I mean RIGHT on top of me. Since I was in bed, the sheets were up to my neck. The mosquitoes smelled fresh meat, but the only part of me that was exposed was my head. So I’d start to hear them from a distance, then all of a sudden WHAM! They’d land right on my ear – loud as Hell. Killed them one at a time, but this probably happened about 10 times over the course of the night (didn’t kill them all on the first try).

One of the nicest things about LA is that there aren’t really any bugs – no mosquitoes, few flies. I guess the dry, smoggy air isn’t conducive to their lifestyle. Either that, or the quota for parasitic living is already covered by the talent agents and lawyers.

Before I hopped on the train to Lucca, I decided to pick up a map of the Tuscany region. Thank god for that. Once on the train, there were NO announcements of any kind telling you where it was stopping. And the signs at the stations were only minimally helpful, coming up only when the train stopped for 30 seconds. The map allowed me to figure out approximately where we were so I was ready to grab my luggage and go when we got to Lucca.

Lucca is a small, walled city. Home to around 80,000 people or so. The city center is built inside the old wall, which is fascinating. The wall has been turned into a biking/running path, so you can run around the circumference of the town from a height of about 25 feet. Pretty cool.

Unlike the other cities in Italy, there aren’t many American tourists in Lucca. Mostly filled with locals although there are a fair number of German tourists here. How do you tell the difference between American and German tourists? Well, the Germans are just about the same size as Americans but they have less fashion sense and they speak slightly more loudly. Yes, they are worse than tourists from Virginia.

I got to Lucca around 12:30 and EVERYTHING was closed except for the cafes. I had read that the smaller towns pretty much shut down from 12 – 3 for lunch and it was true. Nothing re-opened until after 3. There also weren’t many banks compared to Rome and Florence. ATMs were harder to come by.

Wandered virtually the entire town in a couple hours. It’s very old – in addition to the wall around the city, there are also towers inside the town. Had the chance to climb one of the towers - Torre Guinigi. It was about a 10 story climb to the top. At the top, there were trees planted there. Why? No idea. Maybe it’s to appeal to the tourists.

There were several other tourists at the top of the tower taking photos of the incredible view. Rooftops, mountainsides, churches, towers. One American couple was standing there, trying to find someone to take their photo, so they approached me. It was hysterically funny. The guy says to me “Scusi. Ummm…. Photo?” and tries to hand me his camera. I acted confused for a second, then said “Sure. Where do you want to stand?” Their jaws dropped when they found out I spoke English. It was really funny in a ‘had-to-be-there’ kind of way. Reminds me of my favorite David Sedaris story from “Me Talk Pretty One Day.” Some Americans were on a train with him and talking about him in English, not realizing he understood every word they were saying. I would SO loved to have fucked with them if that had happened to me.

After the tower, I walked through the Anfiteatro Romano – it was a large ring of buildings. I overheard a tour guide tell a group that it was Italy’s original coliseum, before the one in Rome. Then, over time as it was shut down, the merchants and residents built up a ring of homes/shops on the perimeter of what used to be the arena. Had dinner at a little restaurant inside. Knowing that this was the original coliseum, it made me feel like I should be killing and skinning my own beef with a broadsword.

Picked up a couple souvenirs in the area. First, grabbed a map of Lucca – probably needn’t have bothered. The town is so small, you can’t really get lost. Just keep on walking until you pass by the same place again. Since there’s a wall around the city, you can’t get too far off course. Gotta believe that the mapmakers have it easy in Italy. You don’t actually have to update anything. Just keep printing more of the same. I’m sure that a map of Lucca in 1600 was about the same as it is today.

I also got a deck of Lucca playing cards – it has photos of some of Lucca’s sights.

I’ve been trying to figure out some sort of collectible to get at each destination – but nothing really appeals to me. The typical stuff just bores me – shot glasses, postcards, plates. Just not things that jump out and say ‘buy me!!’

Where the Hell are the penny pressing machines when you really need them?

Something else I noticed in Lucca was that all of the residences had bars on the windows. At first, I thought “How much crime can there be in such a quiet little town?” Then I realized that the windows weren’t to keep crack whores from stealing your DVD player, they were built to keep invading armies from raping your children 500 years ago. Pretty heady stuff, huh?

While walking down one street toward my hotel, I passed by a little Italian restaurant called “L’Attico Sicilio.” From the street, I could hear soft music coming from inside the restaurant. This was unusual in and of itself – most places don’t do that. But what really got my attention was that I recognized the song. And not in a good way. This quaint little Italian restaurant 11,000 miles from home was playing the “Murder, She Wrote” theme song. I shit you not. Felt like I had just walked from Little Europe into Cabot Cove.

My hotel in Lucca seems to be pretty typical. It’s a 4 story building, with only 6 guest rooms. The first floor is lobby and restaurant. 4th floor is where all the rooms are. I’m guessing the 2nd and 3rd floors are where the family lives. My room is pretty large. Much larger than my rooms in Rome and Florence.

In the room, I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Yuck. Sweaty, unshaven and smelly. No wonder I keep getting mistaken for European.

After I checked into room, I wandered Lucca some more. On one street was a museum touting the ‘genius of Leonardo da Vinci’ – sounded interesting although I thought that I had walked by a similar display in Florence. So, I paid my 10 Euros and went in. Turns out that I HAD walked by a similar display. This was not a display of da Vinci artwork. It was an exhibit that featured working scale models of da Vinci’s designs. Everything from tanks to bicycles to his attempts at flying machines. What I gather is that this is a display that was fabricated just for tourists and built in various locations around Italy. No historical significance whatsoever. Just a cheesy way to suck in tourists who have read ‘The DaVinci Code.’

But it was kinda cool, anyway. I even bought a book about DaVinci’s machines. Pretty amazing that he designed stuff that became a reality hundreds of years later.

The weather report says that Tuesday and Wednesday are supposed to have some rain, so I’m a little concerned about riding in that. Tuesday I can cut short if it’s ugly out. But Wednesday I actually have to ride from Lucca to Montecatini Terme so rain or shine, I have to ride.

Another question that I thought of – where in the Hell do I go to the bathroom while I ride? In LA, I just stop at the beach restrooms. Here, I guess I can stop along the side of the road and find a bush – just don’t know if there are laws against that. But, seems like the thing to do.

So, if that Italian wine you bought tastes a little more interesting than usual, you know why.

Random thoughts:

No matter how much the countries of the world disagree or how disparate the cultures are, all kids enjoy chasing down flocks of pigeons to watch them fly into the sky. Some kind of shared, genetic consciousness.

Oh, that and bitchy waitresses. Every country has ‘em.

When there aren’t tourists here, Lucca must be a very closed economic system. All of the people at the restaurants are the people who work at the shops. All of the people who buy at the shops are the people who work at the restaurants. That’s why all of the shops have to close during the lunch time – they all go to support the restaurants.

Hotel owners must just subsist during the slow season. That’s why the hotels are really just homes with guest rooms.

Italians have a unique style of dress. Sometimes they look fantastic – very well put together. Other times, the men look like they raided Herb Tarlek’s closet (for those of you who don’t get the reference – WKRP in Cincinnati, leisure suits). Or, it looks like an episode of “The Brady Bunch Goes To Italy” and left their fashion sense.

English is really the ‘common denominator’ of languages. I’ve noticed it a few times – when a tourist speaks German or Japanese or some other language, the Italians will speak to them in English – it’s the one they have in common.

The Anfiteatro – the buildings are all different heights, even though they were all built from the same original, existing structure. You’d think there’d be some similarity in height but there’s not. It kind of ate away at me since the lack of consistency was troublesome. I’m a little bit anal that way. And, screw all of you who just said “A LITTLE BIT?”

Where in the Hell are the gas stations in Italy? Haven’t seen one since I got here. Particularly in Lucca – they must be outside of town. Perhaps in Rome it’s like in Paris. Last year in Paris, I noticed a gas station underground near a big underground parking lot. Keeps the city intact by forcing something so blatantly unattractive underground.

Of course, in Lucca, why on earth do these people need cars? The roads are tiny (cars drive right down them, with about 2 feet of clearance on either side – just enough to accommodate pedestrians). But you can easily bike from one end of town to the other in about 15 minutes. To be fair, lots of the residents WERE on bikes.

That’s enough for today. More spewing tomorrow.

posted by Joel @ 7:20 AM