Day 13

Italy 2011

Day 13

Our hotel has what we would consider the perfect breakfast (buffet style). There are boiled eggs, great bread, slices of various meats and cheeses, yogurt, healthy cereals, many different fresh fruits, including the best melon (cantalope) from Italy that we have ever had in our lives, and pastries. We could also order our macchiato and cappuccino drinks (two each this morning).

We decided to visit the huge central market. We first walked around looking at all the leather goods for sale in what seemed like hundreds of stalls. Bob bought a wallet. We then went into the huge building where they sell many different food items, including tripe, chickens with their heads still on their bodies, baby lambs (whole!), totally fresh fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, etc, etc., etc. We ate lunch where we’ve eaten every time we’ve been at the market, Nerbone. You order from the counter and eat at long tables with other people.    

Today we spent a lot of time riding the two different lines of the “City Sightseeing Firenze” double level open-top bus. It was very enjoyable cruising through Florence (top level, of course) listening to a little history interspersed with classical music. Our favorite area was across the river where the winding and hilly streets are lined with huge trees and large villas. It was in this area that leafy tree branches brushed peoples’ heads! Here are pictures from our bus ride:

At one point we got off the bus and walked along the route. After stopping in Piazza Michelangelo for  a glass of wine with a view overlooking the city, we decided to walk back across the river to our hotel…. stopping along the way for our first gelato (ice cream pictures can be bad for your health so they have been censored out). We were supposed to go to the Accademia, where Michelangelo’s David is housed, but a big storm struck, and we didn’t feel like walking the eight blocks to get there. At least we saw it last year.

Here are scenes from our walk back to our hotel:  

Now that's cramming hundreds of years of history into a thumbnail!!

Days 11 and 12

Italy 2011

Days 11 and 12

Day 11 There wasn’t a cloud in the sky when we awakened on our last morning in Lucca. We finished packing and walked one last time to our favorite place for caffe’. In a short time we were on the train headed for Florence. We were sad to leave Lucca, but once in Florence, we were excited to be there!

We checked into Hotel Centrale, where we stayed on our first trip in 2004, and Bob recognized the woman behind the desk.  Shari had no memory of her. Now if it had been a man…….

Our hotel is located in a quiet area close to the train station and only two blocks from the Duomo. This is such a magnificent structure! We are in awe every time we see it.

When we looked out our window, this is what we saw. It is Santa Lorenzo.

We had lunch at Cipolla Rossa (Red Onion) Osteria just down the block, and the food was unbelievably good. We had gnocchi in a spicy sauce with fresh pecorino (sheep cheese) and a huge salad with the freshest greens you can imagine and fresh buffalo cheese (a mozzarella cheese made from Water Buffalo milk - also note Shari's plate is wider than her!!).

We walked to the area where we stayed last year with Dan and Jan and found our favorite “haunts”. We had just gotten back to our hotel when a very big storm struck. It rained and hailed complete with thunder and lightening. Now this is was what it looked like outside our window.

We were planning to have dinner at our favorite pizza place across the river, but because it was still raining, we chose to eat at the same place we had lunch. I had a most delicious pasta dish with pork cheeks and goat cheese. Bob had pasta carbonara sauce and another amazingly fresh arugula salad with tomatoes.  If the pictures don’t show it, the portions are huge.

The rain stopped by the time we were finished eating, and it turned out to be a beautiful evening.

Day 12 We had an amazing adventure today, but first we will have to give you a little history. In 2004, on our first trip to Italy with Dan and Jan, we took a one-day guided bike tour into the Tuscan hills around Florence. Outside the small village of Fiesole, our bike group had lunch at a restaurant where only Italian was spoken. It seemed to be located in the middle of nowhere, but the food was so good that we never forgot it. Last year, when we met Dan and Jan in Florence, we set out to find that restaurant. Well, even though we didn’t forget the food, all four of us forgot where it was located! We took a bus to Fiesole and thought we could just walk to it, even though we didn’t even have the name of the restaurant. If you read our 2010 blog, you might remember that we walked and walked but never found it. So this year we were determined to find it, and we did our “homework”. Before leaving on the trip, we found the name of the restaurant….and even found a website. We wrote to them, and in Italian we were able to determine the days it is closed. We were planning to take a cab, but the owner of our hotel said that would be very expensive. She called the restaurant and found how to get there by bus. We took an open-top tour bus to Fiesole, and from there we took a small local bus. No one spoke English, but the few locals on the bus tried to be helpful. However, they ended up getting off before we did. When we finally showed the driver the name of the restaurant, he told us we missed the stop. The locals all talked at once (in Italian) trying to figure out what we should do. We ended up getting dropped off at a very small gravel/dirt road and told to follow it until we got to the main road and our restaurant. This is a picture of where we got dropped off and the road we were to follow.

We walked and walked until we saw a car driven by a farmer and showed him the name of the restaurant. Of course, he spoke only Italian, but we were able to understand that we had missed a turn. This is a picture of the turn we missed:

We took off up the steep hill through the trees, and eventually we made it back to the main road near the restaurant.

A little ways down this road we finally came to our beloved ristorante.

From the plain front, it would be difficult to tell the quality of the food, but that’s how most of the best places are where locals frequent. Once inside, no English was spoken. It was open for only two hours, and many locals arrived for their midday meal and wine.

Everything other people ordered looked so delicious that we wanted to taste all of it. Bob ordered Fettunta con Pomodoro, which is bread with garlic, olive oil, and chopped tomatoes. Shari had Crostini, which turned out to be bread slices with savory pate’s. which was ordered after seeing all the locals ordering it. It was so indescribably delicious. For our next course, Bob ordered tortellini with prosciutto filling topped with ragu sauce. Shari ordered penne with saffron, chopped eggplant, and ground sausage. This picture doesn’t do our food justice:

And that was our last course because we couldn’t eat any more food. However, for the third course we could have had raw beef, pigeon, lamb, etc. We did each end with an espresso so we could stay awake.

We went outside to wait for the bus that would take us to the village where we could catch our open-top bus, but after waiting 45 minutes, a woman worker from the restaurant, who lives in Florence, came out and offered to give us a ride directly to Florence. She spoke only Italian, but Bob was able to communicate a little with her, and she liked him because she is Croatian, too. She sped down the hill weaving around slow cars.

We ended our evening with salads at our new favorite restaurant, Cipolla Rossa, just down the block, because we were too full from lunch to go to the planned restaurant. Afterwards, we went for a walk because it was such a warm and calm evening. We walked into a beautiful church called Chiesa di Santa Maria Maggiore and for a short time listened to singers practicing.                   

             

Days 9 and 10

Italy 2011

Days 9 and 10

Day 9  We thought about taking the train to the beach, but the weather looked iffy. After our morning macchiato, cappuccino, and pastry, we rented bikes and rode three times around the wall. Lunch was outside at Ristorante da Francesco. On the way back to the apartment, we stopped at a small café’ for my daily espresso. An espresso in Italy is two swallows of very strong, pure coffee in a tiny cup on a tiny saucer. This is what the locals drink, and so do I. It keeps me awake all afternoon. When the locals get their espresso, they walk up to a bar, order it, and drink it standing up. It’s kind of like getting fuel for a car. Just like the locals, I add lots of sugar to it. Bob doesn’t order one, but he stands with me.

We fill our water bottle with water from the fountain. We love this Italian tradition. The water is always flowing from springs and is very pure. We even watched a woman with a walker filling her bottles. It’s so good that some forgo a bottle.

This afternoon we toured the cathedral and some excavated ruins under a church. We walked around and looked at possible places for dinner. We looked at, and made reservations at, Trattoria Gigi. It doesn’t open until 7:30 for dinner, and that’s the time we made our reservation for. It’s located in a piazza with pots of bushes/small trees surrounding the outside eating area. We arrived right at 7:30, and by 7:45 the place was filled! Our food was good, especially the tagliatelle with asparagus and pancetta.  The weather was warm and perfect, and we strolled home to our apartment to relax some more.

Day 10

Life is even livelier in Italy on Saturdays.  In and around town, there was the huge weekly outdoor market of fresh food, clothes, and artwork, a parade, and lots of foot and bike traffic on the wall.  We also noticed there were several artists painting and lots of subjects worthy of capturing on canvas.

The weather looked good for a quick run to the beach.  We are close to 40 miles from the beach town of Viareggio, but by train it takes 18 minutes as long as you get off and on when you’re supposed to.  The trains run on time, which is a pleasant fact of Italian life.

This was our first visit to the beach in the town of Viareggio, and we had no idea it would be so enormous.  It is a couple of  miles long and at least as wide as a football field.  Beyond the beach, there are eateries, bars, and shopping that line the length of the beach area.

There must be about 8,000 beach umbrellas! The entire beach is soft sand, and the water is warm and clean.  We’ve been to beaches in France, Greece, Croatia, and other parts of Italy, and most are pebbled or rocky. We walked for a long time along the shore while carrying our shoes.   

The water was ‘perfetto’ even for the guy with the bumble-bee swimming suite.

Finding public restrooms is an aspect of Italian travel that requires sharp eyes.  We’ve learned that the railroad station is usually accommodating.  “Public” doesn’t mean free in Italy, so having coins can turn out to be very important.  In years past, we got used to a bathroom attendant that collects the money and hands out paper towels.  Nowadays, they have started to automate the bathroom, as is the case below.  You put your money into a machine and push a button, the door opens, and you’re given 5 minutes.  The door opens automatically after 5 minutes, so lingering is not advised since there most likely will be people standing in line outside your door.

You leave, the door closes, and the entire bathroom is automatically washed for the next patron.  That’s why when you walk into it everything is covered with water. It washes but doesn’t dry. What can you expect for 50 cents?

Our last dinner in Lucca was with our new good friend, Sara.  She owns and runs Da Francesco where they make the best Tortelli Lucchese. 

Days 7 and 8

Italy 2011

Days 7 and 8

Day 7 was supposed to be the day we took a train to Cinque Terra for a one-night stay. However, it rained throughout the night (of Day 6) and into the early morning (of Day 7), so we decided to stay put in Lucca. We tried to cancel our motel reservation by email, but we never heard back….making us think we will have to pay. We just knew we didn’t want to be hiking between the five towns on a wet, steep trail. We’ve been there two other times, so we didn’t feel too badly.

The weather cleared, and we were able to walk and bike and check out the top of one of the local towers.  Last year, we climbed the tower across the way with the sun-sheltering trees on top.  Those are real people under the trees probably trying to see us.

We have settled into a morning ritual where we make breakfast in our apartment and then go out for a cappuccino (Bob) and macchiato (Shari) and a pastry….always sitting outside. We then shop for bread, meat, cheese, arugula, anchovies, wine, etc. so we can make lunch in our apartment.  At our morning café, transportation is simple and the route uncrowded, just the way we like it.

We had our dinner at our favorite restaurant, Ristorante da Francesco, where we ate our first lunch and where we recognized “our lady”. It has the best tortelli lucchese in Lucca, which is what we ordered. We learned our lady’s name is Sara, and Bob asked her how to make it. She spent a lot of time, along with a young male waiter who knows a little English, trying to write down the recipe. In the end when we paid our bill, Sara actually tipped US!!! She wouldn’t hear of anything else.

Day 8 looked like good weather, so we took a train (two short train rides) to a walled hill town that you don’t read about in Frommers’ or Rick Steves’ books. We heard about it from an Italian woman we met on the train between Rome and Lucca.  The little town of Pietrasanta is home to a lot of artists, so we thought it could prove interesting.  We’re guessing an artist lived in this house.

We were complementing ourselves on doing so well buying train tickets from the machines and navigating the system. However, on the way back, the train was stopping at the town where we had to change trains. The train stopped for only about a minute because it was a small town. We got our stuff together and moved towards the door, but it was locked. We hurried through the next car and got to that door, but we had to push a button to open the door, but we pushed what we think was the wrong one, and it didn’t open the door. Then the train pulled away from the station with us on it!!! We had to go to the next town, get off, and wait about 50 minutes for a train that would take us back to the town where we would catch the correct train. It reminds us that “Pride cometh before a fall.”

We got back into our Lucca apartment just before a storm hit. It rained hard, and there was even thunder and lightening. We were planning to eat dinner outside at Trattoria Gigi where we ate once last year, but because of the rain, we decided to buy bread, olives, cheese, meat, anchovies, and wine at our favorite nearby shop and dine in our apartment. 

     

Day 6

Italy 2011

Day 6

We need to catch you up on the food.  First of all, dinner service starts at 7:30, kind of late by our standards.  You can see by the following we are of the Early Bird generation.

Supposedly, Tuscan food is not the best in Italy; in fact it’s not in the top 10. But according to Mark Bittman of the NY Times, Lucca is the exception, and we’ve been reminded of that our last couple of meals.  As last night’s dinner shows below, we ordered one thing from several courses to make sure we sampled and enjoyed the wide variety of foods while preventing stomach overload. In honor of our usual traveling companions (Jan and Dan Studer) we ordered Melone and Prosciuto, cantelope and Italian ham.  Underneath the cloak of ham is the melon, and you eat them in combination.  It’s a lovely combination.

Our next course was one of the things we’d like to make at home, Tortelli Lucchese, a specialty of Lucca.  The tortelli is filled with meat and covered with a hearty meat sauce.

Our main course was wild boar stew with polenta (ignore the insalata on the right).  The polenta reminded us of what we had years ago.  The stew didn’t have any of the usual vegetables but did contain olives.  For those wondering, the plates were split so the total service was twice what the picture is showing.

The excellent food got us in the mood for more great food, so we decided to try what Frommer’s said is the BEST place to eat in Lucca, Buca di Santa Anta Antonio.  This is one place where you eat indoors (we prefer outdoors) and the waiters wear tuxedos, even though we were there only for lunch. We made it our main meal.

What was remarkable here was the ravioli with fresh ricotta and pulverized zucchini . . .

and the baby goat with roasted potatoes and green bean pudding.  That’s right, pudding!  That’s now another dish we would like to recreate.  It wasn’t easy, but we got over the baby goat issue pretty quickly.

We finished the day with music from the ages.  We think we have identified Lucca as the home of the composer Puccini.  Every evening of the year there is a one-hour performance in a dedicated cathedral of Lucca.  Tonight’s show was a sampler of Puccini and Mozart, mostly operetic works sung by two women with great voices.  Even though we haven’t made opera part of our listening music, it was great, and we would highly recommend it.

By the way, even though Lucca is a small town, it’s a music capital. We noticed that in July there are many outdoor concerts, held in a large piazza, by such performers as James Blunt, Elton John, B.B. King, etc. There are many classical concerts, too.

Our endless days of sun may be coming to an end.  We walked home tonight from across town hand-in-hand through a light rain.

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Day 5

Italy 2011

Day 5

After eating breakfast in our apartment, we went out for cappuccini and pastry. Then we were off food shopping.  First, we found the local bread shop where only Italian is spoken and the bread is baked early every morning. The next stop was the frutta e’ verdura shop to buy very fresh fruit and vegetables. We bought rucola (arugola), tomatoes, fresh eggs, and very large ripe figs. With the meat and cheese we bought yesterday at the meat and cheese shop (which we knew wouldn’t be open today), we were all set to make our sandwiches for lunch. But first we went to the internet café to send out our blog. This is the only place at which we are staying that doesn’t have internet connection, but we can at least compose our messages in our apartment.  The cost for this wonderful apartment is only 500 euro ($650) for the week, so we can live with this inconvenience.

While Bob was at the internet café, I was at the bank where I met in interesting man. He said he is from La Jolla, CA, but has lived in Lucca for 20 years. He says there is no other place he would rather be. He said Italy is ranked #2 for health services while the U.S. is ranked #39. He gets his prescriptions for free as well as many other services. He actually lives in the country outside Lucca and rents country villas. 

After lunch and a restful break inside our apartment, we rented bikes and “rode the wall”.

It’s very strange that we have not seen one adult wearing a helmet, whether a local or tourist. The only helmets we’ve seen have been worn by local children. In this photo you can see a child wearing a helmet as well as a tratoria (place to eat) set up in the street! 

All of the bikes are one speed because the town is perfectly level. The only “hills” are the paths that lead to the top of the wall. The following is a photo of the top-of-the-wall path and a scene of what we might see looking towards the old town of Lucca.

In all of Italy, the locals leave work and eat a big lunch with their friends, even including wine, and then take a riposo (rest) for three or four hours. This means shops and even restaurants close and don’t reopen until late afternoon (shops) and early evening (restaurants).  You wouldn’t eat dinner until after 7:00 or 7:15. The towns and cities become very “alive” after this time. On the way to Italy, we learned that people in Italy work many less hours than Americans each week. Italians are happy making just enough money to live on. Their focus is on family and the enjoyment of food, wine, and life.  While we were riding our bikes around the wall this afternoon, we observed some locals taking their riposo.

Some of you have asked what kind of weather we’ve had. It’s been perfect, as far as we’re concerned.  It’s been warm and sunny and a little humid every day. If you see me in long sleeves, it’s only because of the sun. I could easily be wearing sleeveless tops every day and evening.

         

Days 3 and 4

Italy 2011

Days 3 and 4

In places with major historic features, guides with groups are a common sight.  On all our other trips to Italy, Jan Studer has been our special personal guide.  Due to her absence on this trip, we hired Maximilianao (or Max) for a tour of the ancient ruins of Rome. It started badly with Max.  Our written instructions were to meet him at the McDonalds (it’s very hard to even use this word while in Italy) in a piazza.  A piazza is what we would call a plaza or town square, not the thing you eat!   The company that set up the tour neglected to inform us that the McDonalds had closed for three months and had removed the sign on their building.  We were searching for a no-longer-existant McDonalds, and our guide who didn’t know us was trying to pick us out of about 2000 people who were milling around the Pantheon and surrounding restaurants and shops.  By divine intervention, Max found Shari about the time Robert found out that McDonalds had moved out of the immediate neighborhood.  Also, the other couple scheduled for the tour didn’t make it, so we had our own personal tour guide. 

Max turned out to be a moonlighting archaeologist and possessed a wealth of information and knowledge regarding the ancient Romans.  One of the first sites he took us to was the murder scene of Julius Caesar, and he provided an interesting history of why he was murdered.  The Italians have excavated the temple site shown here.

Back in Caesar’s time, the government was run for the people (much more for the men than the women).  The government back then was run a lot like it is in the U.S.A., and Julius wanted to change things and become emperor.  In any event, the government worried about popularity (kind of like now) and so they mark many of the parts of the public buildings with SPQR, perhaps the first government acronym, and it stands for Senate, People, and Rome (Senatus Populusque Romanus).  In Latin, the Q works.  It was a small thing to notice, but suddenly it was everywhere chiseled into marble.  I guess it was the precursor to our E Pluribus Unum.

Then in succession he showed and told us the origin of the Forums, several Arches to Triumphs including the one to Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, and the Coliseum.  There is more than one forum and the word means marketplace, which we hadn’t known.

The finale of the tour was the Coliseum, and it’s almost unbelievable what the Romans built.  The engineers who designed it definitely earned their sheckles. 

Some final pieces of information we gleaned from our personal archaeologist were

• The Romans were small in stature, somewhere between 4½ to 5 feet tall. Max explained they ate little protein, as it wasn’t readily available. Yet they conquered and ruled lots of people, including larger meat eating peoples.  Tough little roosters were the Romans.

 

• Eating was one of their passions.  They occasionally had 45-course meals.  How would you like to be the chef for such a dinner feast?  They were also the first bolemics, but only in order to stuff more food in.
• The word “arena” means sand, and that is what they put on the floor of the coliseum where the gladiators and wild beasts fought. Sand provided traction and absorbed the blood (another piece of engineering).  In the movies, the gladiators seem to fight lions, but they were only part of the animal kingdom that was part of the show.  Several types of exotic large animals were used to please the audiences, including giraffes, bears, etc..  The shows were to win the support of the public.

We concluded our day with a meal at the Hostaria Romana, our new best restaurant in Rome.  Sorry, no pictures, but all the courses (just 4), were excellent, and our waiter made everyone laugh. After another day of walking many of the streets of Rome, we headed back to our excellent hotel, Hotel Oceania. It has the best staff in our travel history. After climbing the 114 steps several time each day to this hotel, coupled with the miles and miles we walk every day, Shari is realizing she is getting sufficient training for the Grand Canyon.

Day 4

After a sad good-bye to the friendly staff at Hotel Oceania, we walked our suitcases to the huge Rome train station, where Bob has gotten quite good at avoiding the long lines of foreigners seeking to buy their tickets from a live person. Instead, he buys them from one of the machines, which makes the task a quick five-minute process. He has also learned to read the boards to find the correct track. It was a quick non-stop trip in a first-class car on the fast Eurostar. We then had to change to a slow train for the rest of the trip to Lucca. It’s slow because it stops at every little train station along the way. It took a total of three hours to get to Lucca.

We walked our suitcases into the old town, which is surrounded by a 60-foot thick wall that is about three miles around. The top of the wall is a park-like place with trees and a path/road where people walk and ride bikes. Cars are not allowed on the wall. And even down below in the town, cars are allowed by permit only. Therefore, it seems that every local, young and old, owns a bike. Even dogs ride bikes.

Bikers and pedestrians rule the narrow streets, but unfortunately there is no organized direction of riding. Throw in a few cars and a few large tour groups and you might have what you’d call chaos. Fortunately we arrived on Sunday, and things were quiet. The tour groups come from the cruise ships only on certain week-days and for only a few hours.

We found our apartment from memory. There was no check-in. All we had were the keys that had been mailed to us months ago from the owner in Massachusetts. We were so excited to be back in Lucca and “our” apartment that we dropped off our suitcases and were out the door within minutes. We had a late lunch at our favorite ristorante called Da Francesco. We shopped at our favorite shops for meat, cheese, wine, eggs, etc. and walked around the town. We paused to watch an Italian rock concert held outside in a large piazza. We then had dinner at our favorite pizzeria called Mara Meo.