We decided that we'd had our fill of museums and took a side trip to two cities that once struggled with Florence for dominance of Tuscany: Pisa and Lucca. Smaller and more manageable, they kind of made you glad that Florence won.
Since today was a national holiday celebrating the liberation of Italy by the Allies in 1945, Pisa was probably even more packed than usual, with plenty of Italian families mixing it up with American, European and Asian tourists.
The iconic Leaning Tower is more impressive than expected (certainly it's much larger than the one at Prince Restaurant on Route 1 in Saugus, Mass.), but the hordes lining up to take pictures of co-travelers "holding up the tower" and vendors hawking all manner of Leaning Tower tchotchkes are just as tacky as one might imagine. We were more than willing participants in the photo-snapping frenzy but let the Lucite Leaning Towers be.
Even if it weren't leaning, the tower's graceful arches and nearly ignored Duomo and Baptistery next door form a nice architectural trio, especially since they're fronted by a manicured lawn of a couple of acres that has signs clearly warning people to stay off the grass. Of course, people wilfully ignore the signs (their being exclusively in Italian doesn't help), and the police come by periodically to shoo the photographers and their subjects away. I wonder how many times this little ritual is played out in a day!
From Pisa it was a half-hour drive to Lucca, which has its share of tourists, too, though in far fewer numbers than in Pisa or Florence. The home of "Madama Butterfly" composer Giacomo Puccini, it's unlike any of the other cities we have visited: Its wall continues to have a practical use as a walking and bicycle trail. At about 30 feet high, it's the perfect vantage to take a stroll (you can perambulate the 2.5-miles around the whole city) and admire the architecture of Lucca on one side and the pristine Tuscan countryside on the other.
After our 40-minute walk, we found a fine gelateria run by Brits, the better to refuel ourselves for our trip back to Prato and Florence.
Since today was a national holiday celebrating the liberation of Italy by the Allies in 1945, Pisa was probably even more packed than usual, with plenty of Italian families mixing it up with American, European and Asian tourists.
The iconic Leaning Tower is more impressive than expected (certainly it's much larger than the one at Prince Restaurant on Route 1 in Saugus, Mass.), but the hordes lining up to take pictures of co-travelers "holding up the tower" and vendors hawking all manner of Leaning Tower tchotchkes are just as tacky as one might imagine. We were more than willing participants in the photo-snapping frenzy but let the Lucite Leaning Towers be.
Even if it weren't leaning, the tower's graceful arches and nearly ignored Duomo and Baptistery next door form a nice architectural trio, especially since they're fronted by a manicured lawn of a couple of acres that has signs clearly warning people to stay off the grass. Of course, people wilfully ignore the signs (their being exclusively in Italian doesn't help), and the police come by periodically to shoo the photographers and their subjects away. I wonder how many times this little ritual is played out in a day!
From Pisa it was a half-hour drive to Lucca, which has its share of tourists, too, though in far fewer numbers than in Pisa or Florence. The home of "Madama Butterfly" composer Giacomo Puccini, it's unlike any of the other cities we have visited: Its wall continues to have a practical use as a walking and bicycle trail. At about 30 feet high, it's the perfect vantage to take a stroll (you can perambulate the 2.5-miles around the whole city) and admire the architecture of Lucca on one side and the pristine Tuscan countryside on the other.
After our 40-minute walk, we found a fine gelateria run by Brits, the better to refuel ourselves for our trip back to Prato and Florence.
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