Getting into and around Lucca

Our most relaxing Italian times

Ride Summary

Distance: around 100 miles in total
Climbing: a few thousand feet in total
Descending: same
Difficulty: medium-low
We went on several rides during this time. This is the longest and nicest one.
Link to photo gallery from this trip

Our travel from Split to Lucca - all 25 hours of it! - was a bit frustrating. A ferry with beds is better than a ferry without beds and sleeping on the benches, and we had a surprisingly good and even reasonably-priced-for-what-it-was meal. However, the boat smelled like diesel everywhere including in our room, and we ended up trapped onboard in our arrival port for hours, til we were finally allowed to disembark. Plus of course there was the initial ferry which we'd booked months in advance which got cancelled while we were already in Europe. Overall not the best travel experience, but at least this was the last international travel we had to suffer until we headed home.

Ancona train station was a bit frustrating since we'd missed our original connection, but we managed to get on board another one bound in the correct direction, and got out of town headed for points west.

Stopover for lunch in Bologna, and ate at a random pizza/pasta place in Bologna which was tasty to both of us but hard on Lori's tummy. Nonetheless, we made the most of our layover and took a lil ride around town, after Lori bought another new lock. (Spoiler: she found her second lock again while we were packing up to head home from Rome). Our train out of town to Porta was again frustrating to get booked, but we managed it ok and got on board quickly enough for our bikes to be easy to stow, as the trains tended to get full (especially of bikes) by departure time.

The last train of the day from Porta was easy, except bike spaces were oversold and racks weren't compatible with our bikes, plus we almost missed train due to slow elevators (but I suppose at least there were elevators). Fortunately the conductor kinda said "whatever" to our poorly stowed bikes, and so we carried on for the shortest ride of the day.

a typical street - alley-sized but crowded with shops and people - in old town Lucca

Don't let the portcullis hit you in the ass

Once we arrived in Lucca, the google maps bike directions from the train to our place included enough stairs that we had to unload bikes to get them up, and then reload at the top to finish the ride to our place (once again, in old town) - less than a mile of total distance. Here, the host was again wonderful and we got to spend 5 good days. Aside from one errand to mail some stuff home and the rides out to Pisa and to a wine tasting, we spent the whole week inside the walls of the town in the most historic part of the town. One of the interesting signs we saw on the walk around the walls was about some league of heritage walled cities in Europe, of which Lucca and Zadar are both part!

The first morning in town turned out to be Italian independence/unification day, and there was some marching and speeches and flags in the major town square, so we watched the muckety-mucks parade around a bit. The most interesting happening to watch was the unfurling of this long-ass Italian flag by some firefighters who belayed from the balcony to deploy the flag. The most interesting thing to hear was some opera singing between speeches!

We spent much of the week wandering around town afoot. Much history was experienced, museums, cathedrals, and other structures mostly.

One afternoon, we took a long and pleasant though hilly ride to wine tasting in the nearby hills, and we had one of the best meals of our trip. The wine pours were huge and numerous so we felt quite happy by the end of the meal and the quick ride back to town was a nice nightcap.

Another afternoon, we took a less fun, more trafficky but also fortunately flatter ride to Pisa to see the boring leaning tower, the eleventy million tourists trying to take pictures of themselves pushing the leaning tower back up (nobody seemed to be trying to push it the other direction in their forced perspective shots). In Pisa we were hungry, and ate some severely overpriced tacos. Not bad by my books, but Lori couldn't appreciate their decency at 50 euros for the meal without alcohol.

We had some other pretty good meals, including this steak (Florentine style) that was brought to us all a-sizzle and we ate it in the drizzle of a pleasant evening.

Additionally, we:

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