Italy Cycle Journal

Day 5 - Lucca/Pisa

Day 5 – Lucca/Pisa

Wow, don’t know how much time I’ll have to write today. Last night I slept from about 9:30pm until 8:00 this morning. I was exhausted. Just tried to load too much into the past few days I guess. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem for the next few days. Other than cycling and eating, not going to be a ton to occupy my time.

But first, here’s the rundown on yesterday.

Woke up at around 5:30am to the sound of chirping birds. And NOTHING else. No cars, no ambient noise of neighbors, trucks or anything else. Kind of eerie. You get really used to having that constant background noise when you live in a city.

I do have an Italian cell phone with an Italian number. Picked it up for next to nothing – they have cell phones here for 49 Euros. And the service is ‘pay as you go’ so you don’t have to sign contracts to get the phone that cheaply. Bought a ‘recharge’ card to recharge my phone with service minutes. I figured I could do it without any trouble – I knew enough Italian to figure out the instructions on the back (well, at least I did when I looked up half the words in my dictionary).

But here’s the problem. Essentially the instructions on the back of the card say “Call this number and follow the instructions there.” When I called the number, of course everything was in Italian. I’d have to be the world’s fastest page-flipper to look up words fast enough to keep up with Italian voice mail. I tried a few times and failed miserably. Fortunately, the desk guy at the hotel (also the cook, the handyman and the porter) did it for me. So, now I have some good phonage.

Not sure why this is such a natural instinct, but when I try to make myself understood in English, I speak English with an Italian accent. Hmmmm… yeah, that helps.

Tried to load up on carbs a bit for breakfast to give myself plenty of strength for riding. Shouldn’t be an issue – the ride’s not that long today. But the last thing I want is to pass out from exhaustion in the middle of the Italian countryside.

Took off for Pisa around 9:30am. The ride was incredibly easy on the way there. All total is was only 15 miles one way and no hills to speak of. Even though I had to stop frequently to read my directions, take photos and just chill out with the views, it only took me about 90 minutes. If I had known where I was going, would have been under an hour.

I had brought along my mp3 player, but quickly decided that I didn’t want to use it along the way. Not that there were any classic, historical ‘sounds’ along the way, but I was so busy figuring out directions and road signs and everything else that the music would have been a total distraction I didn’t need.

Italian drivers are crazy and the roads are skinnier than Paris Hilton on crack (aka Paris Hilton), but the drivers are very respectful of cyclists – giving them wide berth as they pass. Much nicer than the drivers in the US who seem to delight in figuring out exactly how close they can get to you without killing you. There are two reasons that seem to explain why the drivers here are protective of the cyclists. First, cycling is a very popular sport – I was passed by several cyclists along the way who were booking along at about double my speed (the Giro d’Italia just finished up here a couple days ago – it’s the second most famous race after the Tour de France). Second, none of the old people drive. They all seem to ride bikes everywhere. This has a two-fold effect. #1 – old people are shitty drivers. #2 – Drivers look out for the old people, who are nearly as erratic on bikes as American old people are behind the wheel of their cars.

The ride to Pisa didn’t give me any cardio work, that’s for sure. All level ground. Later this week, I’ll be wishing for ground without hills. One day has climbing of around 2400 feet. For those of you who don’t know what 2400 feet is like, it’s a pretty tough climb. In LA, it’s like riding to the top of the Sepulveda Pass. Then doing it again. And again. And again. The S. Pass is about 600 feet from the Valley to the top. For those of you from Wisconsin, climbing 2400 feet is like climbing every damn hill in the state one after the other.

Lots of the tourist attractions you see when you travel don’t live up to the hype (hello Mona Lisa? Sorry, I was looking for something interesting). But the Leaning Tower is really cool. Much bigger and more interesting than I was expecting – another structure that was huge and made mostly of marble, I think.

Unfortunately, the entire area was covered in little tourist venues. Sidewalk shops virtually surround the tower and the church it was built next to. What the Hell, had to buy a few cheesy souvenirs. So, I picked up a couple tiny replicas of the Tower. I tried to negotiate with the guy like you’re supposed to, but it didn’t work. Negotiating with these guys is tough in the first place, and then they decide they don’t speak English when you try to negotiate. All of a sudden, they just start shaking their head in confusion and they repeat the price. As a negotiating tactic, that’s pretty effective.

Would have like to have stayed in Pisa a bit longer, but it started to really cloud up so it looked like rain was on the way. So, I bailed – knowing that the ride back to the hotel was longer and more challenging than the ride to get there.
I was prepared for rain if it had happened. All of my stuff was in little plastic baggies. That wasn’t what I was worried about. And I didn’t care if I got wet – it’s warm, so it’s not like I’d be freezing from the cold. No, what I was worried about was getting my little Leaning Tower souvenirs wet – likely they’d disintegrate with water.

The ride back was great, the route took me up into some of the hills and closer to the castle I had seen on the way down to Pisa. There was a little side trip to ride up the hillside to get up close to the Nouvanna Castello, which I took. It was a pretty good climb, but short. Got to see the valley below. Some great views all along the way.

The other thing I’ve noticed about touring alone is that it really allows my mind to wander while I’m riding. So, I think about a lot of random shit and come up with really stupid thoughts and awful jokes. As you might be able to tell from one of the photo captions. Fortunately for those of you reading this, I don’t remember every dumb joke I come up with – and I don’t stop to make notes of all of them.

While I was riding along, in each little town there was spray painted graffiti – in Lucca, it said “Pisa = Merde” and “Firenze = Merde” then in Pisa, it said “Lucca = Merde” etc., etc.

This is the Italian version of “Michigan Sucks!”

I got back to Lucca in the nick of time. Almost. The rain started coming down heavily when I was about 3 blocks from the hotel. So, I didn’t get completely drenched while I rode.



Okay, picking this up on Thursday AM (but still writing about Tuesday 3/17). Got crunched for time from sleeping so much, so I couldn’t write as much as I wanted to. And I’m finding that I’m forgetting a lot if I don’t write it down right away (at least I THINK I’m forgetting a lot – how would I actually KNOW if I’m forgetting stuff?)

While I was walking around Lucca for a couple days, I noticed that it was very white. No black people as far as I could tell.

UNTIL. It started raining – then there were several black men walking around the streets of Lucca hawking umbrellas. Not sure what they do when it’s not raining but I swear everyone was white right up until that point.

There’s a little fountain in a plaza in Lucca – right outside of the internet place I found. While I was updating the blog on Tuesday, I saw car after car coming up and filling up bottles of water at the fountain. Not sure what the deal was – there didn’t appear to be any religious aspect to the fountain – it was pretty basic. I’m guessing that it’s just a fountain of really pure water or something? Who knows – maybe that’s where they bottle the Pellegrino? That’d be funny, wouldn’t it? The bottled water that we pay $7 for in LA is bottled by a 90 year old guy about 4 foot 9, standing in front of a public fountain filling one green bottle after another.

Speaking of Pellegrino, I haven’t seen it anywhere. I asked for it in a restaurant and the guy just kind of stared at me like I had asked him to serve me a “wine cooler.” I actually had to explain that I wanted fizzy water (acqua frizzante).

The bottled water is cheap as Hell here, compared to the Diet Coke. Once place, I bought a bottle of water for .30 Euros. Most places it’s under .50 Euros, even if it’s sparkling water. In case you were curious, bottled water in the US is a scam. It doesn’t cost them jack shit, but it costs as much or more than Coke does. Think about it – a bottle of Crystal Geyser sparkling water (which I buy all the time) costs 99 cents or so. A 2 liter bottle of Coke sells for less than that most of the time. Why? No syrup, no secret formula, just water and bubbles. But it costs more? Sigh.


Restaurants in Lucca are very specialized. The seafood restaurant had nothing except seafood. Another restaurant seemed to specialize in various fowl. One of the items on the menu was ‘roast pigeon’ --- ewwwww…

Ended up eating a very traditional Italian restaurant on Tuesday night. The food was very good, although I ordered beans as a side dish and it wasn’t what I was expecting. Essentially it was a big bowl of baked beans – but they weren’t baked and didn’t have any kind of sauce or seasoning. It was just the beans. I had to add mass quantities of olive oil and pepper to them to make them palatable.

The menu had a dessert listed on it that sounded really delicious – Panna Cotta. It was described as “Cold Baked Cream covered in Hot chocolate.” Was dying to try it. Well, perhaps dying is an exaggeration because I didn’t get it and didn’t die. They didn’t have any, so I ended up with yet another bowl of ice cream. This ice cream was in a ball shape and coated in powdered cocoa, so that was pretty tasty.

Eating in Italy is definitely a social activity. During lunch, all of the Italians get together and stand around at the local caffes eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. I’m not sure how these places all manage to stay in business. There seems to be a caffe for every 6 people during lunch time. The focus is definitely NOT on volume or table turns. The one person behind the counter (the owner) stands around bullshitting with the 6 people who come in for lunch. Kind of Italy’s version of Cheers – but on a really small scale.

Dinner is even more of a social affair, but instead of eating with your cronies, you eat with your spouse. The way Italian dinner works is you order one course at a time, rather than get a plate with all of your food. So, first you have your appetizer (similar to the US), then you get a plate of pasta, then once you finish that, you get your meat dish. Some places evidently add another course or three to that pattern.

All of this serves to stretch dinner into a 2-3 hour affair, during which the couples share a bottle of wine or two. They spend the time in between courses chatting with each other. Kinda nice, actually. Drunkenness evidently isn’t an issue in most of Italy – the only drinking they seem to do is with meals.

After dinner, went back to the hotel room. The forecast for tomorrow is still for rain, so I’m packing light and bringing only the essentials including rain gear. I also had the foresight to bring along some dry cleaning bags from Florence that I’m thinking may come in handy if it gets really wet out.

Random thoughts:

People in Lucca were bicycling in the rain, holding umbrellas. Never really seen that before. Just imagine navigating tiny streets, wet, avoiding cars, pedaling and doing it all with an umbrella in your hand? No thank you.

Have to get a note of thanks to Phil Haines, my high school French teacher. Learning French certainly made my trips to Paris more enjoyable and really kind of prepped me for taking this trip to Italy. If I hadn’t had the Parisian experience behind me (and knowing the language), then coming to Italy without knowing the language would have been much more challenging and probably not as much fun.

About every third business in Lucca is a real estate office. Evidently, selling little villas in Tuscany is still a very popular activity.

A common menu item in Tuscany is Prosciutto e Melone. Wasn’t completely sure how to translate that, but I thought it meant ‘Ham and Melon.’ Yep, that’s what it is. Sounds kinda nasty to me, but I guess we put pineapple on our hams for Easter?

I don’t know much Italian, but two things I did learn: numbers and pronunciation. Numbers have come in handy every time I want to buy something. No need to use hand signals or count on my fingers. Pronunciation is something I’m glad I learned – makes it much easier to order food and ask questions about signs I read.

Italian’s a cool language because everything is pronounced exactly as it is spelled, once you know the basic pronunciation rules. No silent letters, no variations and billions of exceptions like we have in English. What you see is what you say – I guess because this was the original Romance language, from which all others sprang. Unlike English which a cobbled together bastardization of any number of languages and rules.

posted by Joel @ 4:11 AM