Well, Lucca ended up being not quite everything I had hoped for, but it was still a nice day.
My problems started on the way from Venice to Lucca. My train from Venice was an hour late, so I got to sit around forever waiting for it to arrive. There were a bunch of Italian teenagers in my compartment, but they didn’t speak much English and I wasn’t feeling up to stretching my limited Italian enough to have a conversation, so we didn’t talk much. Then when I got to Florence, I had to wait over an hour to transfer. So, I ended up getting into Lucca around 3 pm.
I had written down the wrong directions for my hostel, so it took me forever to find it, no thanks to the people who run it (their website said they were inside Lucca, which was untrue, and they were useless when I called them). When I got there, the hostel looked really great, but they told me to go upstairs and “Wait ten minutes so they could take me to the other building.” I thought I was just going next door or something, so I wasn’t sure why I had to wait so long. I found out it was because they were actually putting me in another hotel on the other side of the city. The guy who ran it was even more surly than the people at the place I was supposed to stay at, and the place was just dirty. There were all kinds of marks on the walls, the paint was peeling, and the floor of my room hadn’t been swept. Plus… well, let’s just say the walls were thin. Obviously when you’re staying in a hostel you aren’t always going to get the nicest places, but I think it’s reasonable to expect a place to at least try to be clean. And, it’s just really shitty when you put a lot of time into planning a trip and finding a good place to stay only to arrive and find out that someone’s running a bait and switch on you.
I was just on my way out when my roommate arrived. He was an officer in the US Army called Luke, a few years older than me, and pretty cool. He was definitely much more refined than you’d expect from an army officer. I guess just the fact that he was spending part of his leave in Lucca was a pretty big hint.
So we headed into town and checked out the sights, not that there were all that many. Lucca has a decent cathedral, but it was being heavily restored, so there wasn’t much to see. Plus, it was raining lightly, so we didn’t feel like doing too much exploring. After wandering around for a while, we ended up having dinner at some random tourist trap. I couldn’t believe how bad their Insalata Caprese was–a complete disgrace to Italians everywhere. After dinner we just sat and talked about random stuff for a while. Unlike almost every other restaurant I’ve been to in Europe, the waitress really seemed to want to get us out of there, because she immediately gave us the cheque (I almost always have to ask) and then hovered 5 feet away waiting for us to pay it/.
The nightlife section of the Lets Go profile of Lucca basically was a description of the felateria, which apparently had “throngs” of people every night. We checked it out after dinner, and while there were no throngs in sight, they had some pretty good gelato. Not the best, but still very good. They were the first gelateria where I saw “Zuppa Inglese” (yep, English Soup… still no idea what that means). After the gelateria, we wandered around a bit more, then went to an enoteca (wine bar) recommended by the waitress at the restaurant. I wanted to try grappa, which I tried to order, but they were apparently out of it. I got the gist that the waitress was suggested something else instead, but I had no idea what she suggested, so I just smiled and said, “Si, va bene”. Whatever I got was incredibly alcoholic: even more so than grappa according to Luke. I could feel my stomach rebelling after just the smallest tastes, so I ended up not finishing it.
So that was pretty much it for Lucca. After the enoteca, we headed back to the hotel, got some rest, and then went our separate ways in the morning. Lucca was a pretty cool town, but the hotel really ruined it for me. It’s really a place where you want to go to just relax and unwind. But for that, you need a few good friends, and a place to stay that feels homier and doesn’t make you pissed off about being ripped off. The walls of the city were pretty cool. They’re like 15 yards wide, and they’ve been made into a park that forms a ring around the city, with trees and bike and walking paths. They would have made for a great walk with views of the city and the surrounding hills… if it hadn’t been raining.