N and R took a day trip...

Yesterday we hopped on a train and took the hour long trip to Lucca, a small medievil tuscan town to the west, before eventually making it to Pisa where we stayed the night. Oddly enough I took almost no pictures, even of the leaning tower....which I guess is ok since everyone knows what it looks like. Lucca, though, was great...we really enjoyed it. Lucca is alot like the counterpart to florence, where you still have typical old tuscan buildings and tiny winding alleyways, but unlike florence it felt like a completely intact community, unaffected by tourism the way florence is. It was a very relaxing afternoon of window shopping and sitting in picturesque piazzas taking in some sun. The city is surrounded by giant medieval walls, and these walls are so wide that the top of the walls are lush with green grass and pedestrian walkways which crowded with people out for their pre-dinner stroll. It was really nice to walk along these massive walls looking out over the countryside on one side of the wall, and the towers rising above the city on the other.

Then we went to Pisa....and I'm not sure what more i can say about that....we saw the tower and i ate some good seafood. I thought it unfortunate that Pisa's baptistry and duomo, which are actually really nice, are completely overlooked by visitors who are only interested in the tower. The people of pisa seemed to be quite different than lucca and florence or siena....I'm going to guess that pisa is like tuscany's new jersey.