Italia! Our first stop in Lucca

We crawled out of bed 24 hours ago. Sort of. We got up at 5:30 am for an 8:00 flight and now we’re flying over Ireland at 5:30 am, but of course it’s a nine-hour time difference. So it’s actually 8:30 pm back in California. That might explain why I’m awake writing my blog instead of sleeping. Oh well… I’ll sleep tomorrow. We lucked out and were able to upgrade to premium seats at the last second for only $230 each. Normally it’s three times that much. I recommend you check premium and first-class prices when you book your economy tickets. That way you will know if your being offered a good deal. I’d say we saved about fifteen-hundred bucks for these seats.

But, speaking of tomorrow/today, we’ll be landing in Rome at 8:00 am. The biggest dilemma is to find out what our Covid test results are. We got our noses swabbed Sunday morning. When we landed in Dallas, we still hadn’t gotten the test results back. The problem is, we may have to quarantine in Italy. We’ll see. We already had to fill out an online form to allow the Italian government to trace us if someone on this plane gets sick with Covid (which was a good thing because they wouldn’t let us board the plane in Sacramento without it).

From the Rome airport we’ll catch the airport train into Rome. We’ll change trains there for a high-speed train to Florence (I have a secret fear that we’ll sleep through the train stop and wake up in Milan or something). In Florence, we’ll change again to a local train to Lucca. When we get off that train, we’ll walk straight out to the city wall and find the tunnel with the stairs. After about ten minutes walking, we’ll arrive at our place. By that time we’ll be zombies. But, that’s okay. We’ll sleep for awhile and then go explore Lucca, our home for one week.

So far not much has happened. I read Black Beauty from Sacramento to Dallas. From Dallas to Rome I’ve watched Luca (an adorable movie about two little sea monsters who become boys and take up residence in Cinque Terre, Italy), Peter Rabbit II, then I watched Raya and The Last Dragon (another cute movie about dragons and saving the world). During that time I managed to not notice my water bottle was leaking. Now I have wet britches. Traveling is such an adventure, right?

Well, a lot’s happened since that last note. When we landed we signed onto the free wifi at the airport before going into customs to find our test results, which were negative. Then we hustled through customs and never had to show the results. We bought train tickets at the airport kiosk and walked for five minutes to find the train. The first ticket doesn’t say where to get off the train… we kept going and going and finally I got desperate enough to ask another passenger via google translate. She waved her arms around dramatically and mimicked getting off the train and getting the train going the way we’d just come from—towards the airport. This seemed odd, but we did it. We went back to one of the stops that was bigger and dragged our luggage to a customer service desk. In limited English he told us we were screwed and had to go to the ticket office. The not-so-gracious lady at the ticket office issued us new tickets after chewing us out for not getting off at the correct stop. We were baffled. She extended a hand for all my tickets and pointed to the next ticket which had the correct STARTING point for that ticket! How was I supposed to know that? Just my opinion, but I think the first ticket should’ve had both the start and stop, like a plane ticket. We ended up going to Florence, then Pisa, then Lucca. By-the-way, we did have to show our vaccination shots on the trains.

But we’re here now. At the point of shear exhaustion, we walked straight forward from the train station towards the city wall and found the tunnel and stairs going through the wall. We went down little cobble stone streets until we came to ours. Right across the street from the famous Torre Guinigi (a medieval tower with trees growing on top). It makes it easy to find our place :) Just as I reached for the door, the landlady opened it and welcomed us in.

We were starving and wiped out. I knew I couldn’t eat another protein bar, so we scurried to the central plaza to grab a bite and a beer and wine. By the way the wine I got is excellent and local. Joe kept dozing off at the table, so we went back and slept for a couple of hours and headed back out for groceries (okay—beer, wine, milk). Then we slept like babies for nine hours.

Today we went for real groceries then we drank espresso and ate paninis. But one of the high-lights of this whole trip was meeting our old friend, Veronica for lunch. We met her fifteen years ago at a Club Med and have stayed in touch ever since. She came to Lucca to have lunch with us. She treated us to a meal at one of the oldest restaurants in the area, Ristorante All’Olivo. Afterwards she gave us a little tour of Lucca.

As you all know, I am fascinated by odd behavior. In Italy, it’s odd to be drunk. It’s a cultural no-no. So, we’re standing there chatting with Veronica near one of the cathedrals and I noticed there’s this dude sitting on the steps being a little loud and unruly. He was with another guy and a lady. Next thing I know the buddy leaves and the unruly guy passes out, with his head on the girl’s lap. His bear bottle rolls away about five feet. None of that is that interesting, but the Italian’s reaction to it was priceless. The tourists glanced at him and kept going. The Italians glared as they went past. Their expressions were so fun to watch; anger, embarrassment, disgust. They shook their heads and muttered. Even the teens looked amazed. Veronica said this just doesn’t happen, especially not in the city center. I’m sure his parents have received several phone calls today!