Leaving Lucca

As hard as it is to believe, today is our last day in Lucca.  We leave tomorrow morning by train on the final week of our adventure, headed for Zurich, Paris, and London.

On our final day, I made sure to rent a bicycle and spend an hour cycling around the wall.  The weather was great, there were a lot of people out, and the ride gave me time to reflect on our month here.  Shelley and I continued reflecting this evening during our last supper.

As I rode around the city, I thought about what a wonderful and foresighted gift it was to turn the old thick defensive walls into a city park that is enjoyed on a daily basis.  Many think the park is Lucca’s signature feature.  The park dates back to the early 1800’s and was at least partly due to the efforts of Duchess Maria Luisa, the daughter of the king of Spain, who was given authority over Lucca after Napoleon was toppled.  Under Napoleon, Lucca was ruled by his sister from 1805-1814.  Today there is a statue of Maria Luisa, the successor to Napoleonic rule in Lucca, in Piazza Napoleone, which means she has a perfect view of all the Summer Festival concerts, including the Backstreet Boys tomorrow night.

As I rode, I also contemplated Lucca’s reputation as not touristy compared with other cities in Tuscany.  There are clearly plenty of tourists here, or if they’re not tourists they do a great tourist impression, so where does that reputation come from?  I suspect it’s two things.  One is that Lucca is not a tourist destination with must-see attractions and historical places.  There is nothing to match Pisa’s Leaning Tower or Florence’s Uffizi.  The other difference is that tour groups don’t take over Lucca the way they do other Tuscan cities and towns.

That’s exactly why using Lucca as home base has been more perfect than I could have imagined when we decided to come here.  When we were in Rome I wrote about the tourist’s dilemma—quality vs. quantity.  We deliberately decided that we wanted to live in Lucca and enjoy living here with limited day trips rather than feeling like we had to be seeing something constantly.  That meant that we will leave Tuscany having not visited Florence or Siena, and plenty of knowledgeable travelers will see that as a tragic mistake, but we have no regrets about choosing to be Lucchese for a month.

Lucca’s been a perfect location to live for a month.  It’s big enough that there’s plenty to do—we could stay for a year and never eat twice at the same place—but not overwhelming.  At least once a day I’ve been moved to say, “This is very pleasant,” and it has been.  One of my goals in coming here was having some devoted time to write, and both in quality and quantity that’s been better than I hoped.  Obviously that’s been possible because Shelley has attended to managing our lives on a daily basis—meals, laundry, etc.—allowing me to focus on my writing, and I’m so grateful to her for that gift.

We will leave Lucca with lots of good memories.  Riding the wall today I passed the restaurant we went to our first week here to watch the U.S. play Germany in the World Cup, giving a gallant effort before losing 1-0 to a team that ended up winning the championship, including defeating Brazil by a score of 7-1.  We loved going to Barga, Rome, and Cinque Terre, and we loved having company, but most of all we loved living in the charming, walkable city for a month.

Very few things in life live up to expectations.  Our month in Lucca has been everything we hoped for and more.  As we leave and tackle the final week of our adventure, we’re counting on the Backstreet Boys to fill in for us tomorrow.

It’s been very pleasant.