Last year in November, we spent a couple of days in Lucca, a walled city in Toscana just about 1.5 hours from Pop’s. We immediately loved it. We took the train in from Florence-the station in Lucca is a short walk from one of the wall’s gates. We stayed a lovely hotel, we had a lovely aperitivo, we had a lovely meal, and a lovely walk along the walls and through town. Did I mention it was lovely? The only person who did not think it was lovely was our trusted driver, who upon retrieving us told JJ he hates coming into the narrow walls and trying to navigate the old city center so maybe next time, pick some other lovely village to visit (noted signore).
So, as not to upset the driver this time, we trained it to Lucca from Siena, then trained it Pistoia where our driver can just swing by the train station and pick us up. Pistoia is the closest train station to Pop’s village, which, is not the easiest to get to, hence our trusted driver. But, before all that, we spent 2 days in Lucca in May and I’m here to report, it’s even lovelier in the spring.
As we are creatures of habit, we stayed not only in the same hotel, http://thetuscanian.com but also the same room. But, honestly, it’s the best room in town, and one of my favs things about it, is you can sit on the balcony and listen to the classical musicians practice at the university near by.
Now, I’m sure that you can wander into any bar for aperitivo and it would be perfect, but we know that the apertivio is going to be perfect at Bar San Frediano in Piazza San Frediano…so we immediately went there-even though I was jet lagged and feeling pretty crummy-the thought of snacks & spritzes was keeping me going.
We love it so much we had the same snack back in November-again, creatures of habit.
Directly after eating that slice of heaven I high tailed it back to the hotel and crashed out, I was toast, and y’all, I love this little town, so you know I felt like poo not to enjoy every second, but, we made up for it the next day.
It must have been the fresh Toscana air, mixed with the 12 hours of shut eye + the Zofran, but I woke up feeling fine as wine and ready to conquer the day! Luckily the hubs too was ready to hit the bricks-or walking path as it were. Last year we walked a portion of the wall-this town’s medieval wall is still completely intact and the lovely city has turned it into a walked/biking path and wouldn’t you know it, it’s lovely. This year, we walked the entire path, around 2.7 miles of easy walking. What I didn’t know we needed to do, and wouldn’t have known without the whole wall walk-was Villa Pfanner. Now, I know what you’re thinking-Pfanner-oh yeah, that’s a popular Italian surname …what? I had to know more because from the wall we saw this beautiful garden with a gorgeous fountain and villa.
But first, the tower. Now, you can see this tower from our hotel room and what is curious about it, is the garden up top. We narrowly missed a group tour and got right in to walk to the top. Now, when you get your ticket there is very little information given. And yes, you would expect to walk up a lot of stairs-it’s a tower after all. But what they fail to mention is that they last portion of the climb is sideways up the steepest and most narrow of steps up to this garden…and the best part is, the majority of the tower has lovely, well maintained slowly sloping, wide stairs that lull you into a false sense of security, so when you stand waiting for your turn, because this is NOT a two way traffic situation, watching in horror as normal size humans can’t fit-you think you might have made a mistake, a costly one because you have used all of your lung capacity and energy getting this far. So, go on you must, but the view-totes worth it. Someone took the time to create and maintain this lovely garden in the sky-that someone has some very muscular legs and operatic lung capacity no doubt.
And bonus, we didn’t even die coming down. By this time, the villa was open so we strolled through the lovely streets to make our way to the villa.
Lucca is such an accessible city, that we just followed the streets until we saw the entrance to Villa Pfanner-which y’all don’t need to know any of the details other than-it’s called that because at one point an Austrian fella purchased it and his family still owns it today-thusly Pfanner. Y’all this place was so pretty-we even saw a real life “influencer in the wild” situation! I tried to get a picture, but I’m not an influencer or wild, so it didn’t come out, but trust I watched this lady in a shimmery sheer dress and shoes and purse and hair and makeup and her poor BF following her around with all her stuff whilst she showcased amongst the lemon trees and marble statue-her $49 dollar purse and shoe combo-because up close and between you and me-if she paid more than that for the whole outfit she paid too much, but I bet it looks fire on the Gram. Meanwhile, the smell of the lemon trees was so delightful and intoxicating that when we got to Fiumbalbo, I immediately asked Pop if he could grow me some-much to my dismay, it’s too cold up in the mountains for lemon trees. But down in the valley in lovely Lucca at Villa Pfanner-heaven-of course they can grow lemon trees.
The inside of the villa, and the apartment you can tour is just as lovely-and bonus-there’s a display of old medical instruments in the main salon-which totes made my day.
Well, all this walking and looking at luxurious Italian villas and dreaming of what a grand life that would have been but hard pass on the difficult outfits (doubt I could get a hoop skirt in my backpack) will make a gal hungry-did I mention there was a man and women practicing opera music in one of the apartments of the villa and they had the windows open so we also got another free concert while wondering around the gardens? Heaven y’all. I’m hungry, but it’s heaven y’all.
Off we go to find some grub, and we wanted to try a place that was not on the main square, as to say, we were trying to find a local place…and based on the treatment, local place we did find.
Picture it, Tuscany, May 2023: you’ve wondered around the whole city and stumbled upon a small square with multiple small restaurants side by side. Lovely. The hubs asks for a tavolo per due and off we go. We order spritzes (Aperol for me, Campari for him) and because we overheard the next table over talk about how they come here weekly for the cacio e pepe-we decide on two antipasti and the hubs then orders one cacio e pepe. The woman taking our order did not care for this, we were met with an audible huff, and off she went.
Along came the first plates, you’ve just never tasted tomatoes so good and I live in a place that has an island near that is famous for having extremely good tomatoes.
Now, as you can see-these tomatoes are on a grilled piece of bread which we immediately ate right up-so good. So good. We also wanted to have some buffalo mozzarella as well, which came with sliced tomatoes. Now, we also have some pasta coming, that we are going to share, but we are trying to keep it in check so when the woman who already isn’t pleased with us, comes to take away the dishes so she can serve the pasta, she scolds me for not finishing the tomatoes…I deserved it. Finish it, again, you ordered it, they made it for you, you finish it. Lesson learned again, sometimes I don’t learn them the first time. Anyhoo, I got a lovely bowl of cacio e pepe and the hubs got, well a lovely plate of something. Something he didn’t order. This was when we experienced another first…this woman did not approve of us only ordering one pasta dish, so she just brought the house specialty to the hubs because sharing a pasta dish is not an option here-understood. Si si, we got it, and it was delicious and we ate every bite and then we used the bread to scarpetta so not a drop was left. No WAY we were not going to finish the pasta dish we didn’t order. Hell no, did I mention we love it here, I don’t want to be chased out of town. They’d shoo us out of the walled gates and close them on us forever for an offense like that. We ate every bite and though stuffed, it was too good not to indeed. We didn’t deserve it, but we begrudgingly got wonderful food and care at this little place. A perf example of the frustrating charm Italians possess. They are going to take good care of you, but you’re going to need to know how they feel about it but they aren’t going to tell you how they feel about it, but you’ll know, boh.
Back at the hotel for riposo where the Tuscan sun just happened to be hitting the balcony in the most perfect way to capture my Italian perfectly in one of his happy places.
Even after a nap, all that pasta that we didn’t order had us not searching out a full dinner, but again instead we capped off our perfect stay with a spritz in the piazza and discussed our future apartment in Lucca-you know, something cute and within the walls, of course-and I could WFH there and it’s close to Pop and now we know the deal with ordering a pasta for each human at the table, I think we could really nail this living here in lovely Lucca thing.
Next we are off to Pop’s (first we will train it to Pistoia for an easier pickup-of course) for chapel updates, visits with friends and family, pizza, pasta, wine from a box, homemade limoncello, drives in tiny cars, strolls through town, history lessons, more pasta, more wine, more religious relics, and rain rain rain…but more on that later-ciao y’all.
Ciao Y’all 