Walkabout: Lucca: Goodbye for Now

Who would of thought we could get so attached to a place in just a week? It's hard to believe, but this is our last day in Lucca. Tomorrow, we move on to Austria, our next stop.

When we first arrived at our department, I have to admit I was wondering if I was going to be out of my mind with boredom after a day or two. We had been experiencing planes, trains and automobiles across Europe with only brief stops so the prospect of staying a week in a place that seemed nearly deserted when we arrived was a little daunting. But, we found the Lucca lifestyle agreed with us. Sleep in, go to the corner pastry shop where the locals catch up and have a coffee and a pastry filled with tomato, have a late lunch of something fresh and amazing, bike, hike, take a few photos and then have a late dinner. After dinner, it's down to Piazza Napoleon to hear The Killers and Mark Knofler, who are here performing for the Summer Festival. When Saturday arrived, so did a town-wide antique market and we saw stores open for business that we didn't even know existed here earlier in the week. Lucca comes alive for Saturdays.

Virtually every meal has been an occasion, because Tuscan cooking is more about the ingredients than complicated preparations. A lunch of pasta with Porcini mushrooms, which are everywhere here right now, turned out to be about 50 percent pasta and 50 percent fresh porcini mushrooms with a little bit of herbs and butter to combine everything. For the 10 Euros it cost, I couldn't even afford half the mushrooms it took to make the dish back home...and that would be with those dried out mushrooms that have been hanging on store racks since the Clinton Administration. Lunch of bruschetta was a simple affair of toasted bread covered with fresh, blood red tomatoes with some fresh garlic, basil and olive oil. Pappa al Pommodoro soup turned out to be crushed tomatoes with crusty bread and garlic...wonderful! The kids have done their due diligence on the pizza and gelato here and they give it all thumbs up. The local wines have been just as great...and incredibly inexpensive. It's going to be hard to go back to paying $30+ for a bottle of wine in a restaurant that's not amazing. Around here, 10-15 Euros easily puts you in the amazing category of the wine list.

Well, before we lose the Lucca Lifestyle and its relaxed pace and plunge back into planes, trains and automobiles again, I wanted to give you one last glimpse of Lucca. These pictures were all taken just a few blocks from our apartment. Lucca, goodbye for now.