Lucca

Well I found another small little village in Tuscany that I could easily retire 
to. I took a day trip to the town of Lucca today, about an hour or so by train 
west of Florence. These people know how to design a town. The whole thing is 
encircled by a huge wall and several gates to allow traffic in but there seemed 
to be very little traffic within the town walls. (I included a picture of both 
the outside wall and the entry gate into the town). And the one thing that's 
different about this town than all the others is that it's FLAT! So everyone 
rides bikes everywhere and I figured why not. So I rented a bike for the day and 
just tooled around town. It was like riding your bike at the beach with a little 
Tuscan town wrapped around you. Very cool! One of the nicest rides was along the 
top of the wall. They did a nice job of creating this wide biking, walking, 
jogging trail all along the wall so you can easily circle the town and ride down 
into the section you want to check out. (I included a picture of the bike path). 
There were also all these spots along the wall path where they created little 
shaded park areas where people were having picnics and kids were playing soccer. 
Again, just a great town layout. And the lifestyle was sooo laid back. The 
people were just taking life a little slower. No one was in a hurry. Everyone 
was just walking slowly, talking slowly, eating slowly... is there a gear below 
neutral?? because that's what they're in! It was so refreshing! 
 
One of the other cool things they did was plant trees up on top of this tower in 
the middle of town. So you not only got a cool view over the town, it was shady 
while you were up there. I included a picture from an alley showing the tower in 
the back with the trees on it. I also climbed it and included a picture looking 
out across the roof tops and church spires. After a long day of cruising all the 
back streets and getting happily "lost", I turned my bike back in and caught the 
train back to Florence. It felt like I sort of went back in time since the town 
and the people seemed oblivious to the hectic world all around them. Must be 
nice... 
 
Hope everyone's week is getting off to a good start. Happy May Day! It's 
actually a holiday here in Italy tomorrow (it's their Labor Day) so it will be 
interesting to see what's open and what's not. Have a good one!