Lucca?

[lagatta]

I'm looking at a couple of articles about puttering about on bicycles in Lucca and wondering if Fumobici or anyone else here has been there?

www.lkjh.org/bike/tuscany/north/lucca/index.html
You can click on each little picture to enlarge it.

travel2.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/travel/24luccabike.html

[fumobici]

Lucca is wonderful. I think it would be perfect for tooling around on a bicycle, it is quite flat being in a valley between big hills to the North and a smaller range seperating it from Pisa to the South. Very picturesque and with its own unique and very hearty style of Tuscan cuisine too which I love.

I should do a picture thread on Lucca. I'll just include four small photos I took there here.



Merry-go-round in Piazza Napoleone.



Via Fillungo, shopping street and part of an old pilgrims' road from France.



Piazza built on the site of a Roman amphitheater still retaining the form.



High mountains to the North of Lucca as seen from the centro.

There's a promenade around the old city walls that is a wonderful walk, many do it on bicycle.

[lagatta]

It is a town that has always appealed to me, especially as one of my favourite neighbourhood cafés is run by Lucchesi. Alas Il Signor has died, his quietly elegant wife is still around, but mostly retired. I have seen the most lovely photos from the cyclable and walkable promenade.

This would spur me to get a decent folding bicycle like a Brompton, they are useless on even somewhat serious hills (and I no longer do truly athletic cycling, due to arthritis, but I do slow-cycle a LOT). A Brompton or perhaps even some Dahons would be perfectly adequate for cycling of that nature, and even in the countryside if it is only moderately hilly.

I have seen other piazzas in Italy with that form, even as far away as Friuli.

Here is a NYT article about the wonderful food. And I'm sure there are cheaper and more modest choices of quality: travel.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/travel/24LUCCA.html?pagewanted=1

Lucca must have experienced a period of modern poverty, as there is a fair-sized Lucchese contingent here in Montréal, and I'm sure that is but a shadow of Lucchese imigration in more key target areas. There is nothing comparable from Florence or Siena.

[fumobici]

Yes, the NYT tends to recommend places that want bushel baskets full of money to dine at. They can't help it I suppose, as that's all they can imagine but in a place like Lucca or Bologna it's really difficult to find a bad meal. Really. I can recommend the Osteria Baralla just across Via Fillungo from the anfitheatro, very reasonably priced, pleasantly rustic and friendly. And of course the food is tipica lucchese.

[Deleted]

What is great about the piazza is that they managed to eliminate the automobiles from it. That is often very difficult to do in a "living" city.