[Itinerary Page]The daily diary of a wandering restaurateur
May 26 - Lucca
We headed back south today. We had a B&B reservation in Lucca and Marv Hunt needed to catch a train to Lake Garda for a few days of winding down time on his own before catching a plane for home at the end of the week. We found the stazione, sorted out his train schedule (in several languages) and looked for a break in the city wall to wander around the town. The sky was threatening rain but we had four hours before his train left and we were there ...
I don't know what I expected to find in Lucca, but what we found wasn't it. The city is old, I will grant you that ... but then most everything interesting in Italy is old. I guess that Lucca did not feel like it had been well cared-for. The stucco was peeling, the streets were dirty -- it just didn't feel welcoming. We did our best to trudge through it, though, ducking under cover from time to time as the rains came and went. We "did" most of the city, then took a walk around the top of the city wall back to the train station. Marv got off on his next adventure and Margene and I headed off to find our B&B about 10 miles east of town.
The B&B is clean and pleasant but we were supposed to stay two nights and we are already a day ahead of where we thought we would be by now. In short, we don't have another day's worth of things we want to see in this area. The owner is not pleased, but we are cutting this one short to head off to places that are hopefully more interesting. We went up the hill to an agriturismo (farm stay) restaurant for something different. We got all that and a lot more. Check out the story on Villa Pasquini below.
(While I think of it, be aware that I will sometimes dash off a basic daily note to try and stay ahead of the curve and will go back later to add details, more photos and the like. You might want to re-visit some of the earlier entries from time to time just to iss if there is more information posted.)
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