Hi there,
I want to tell you about the city where my paternal grandfather was born and that I visited in the winter of 2014 with my dad and in the summer of 2017 with Diego. My grandparents were Italian, my grandmother from Milano and my grandfather from Lucca. The first time my dad took me to see Italy was in 2009 and we visited Milan, but we didn’t go through Lucca.
At the end of 2014 I was working in Terni and in December I met my father in Rome and from there we dedicated ourselves to visiting cities that we had not yet seen. Among them, Lucca.
In Italy, since the train is wonderful, you can base yourself in a city and go around the surroundings by train. For example, you can look for a hotel in Pisa or Lucca and from there visit Livorno, Siena and Firenze. It also depends on what each one is used to walking. We saw all of Livorno and half of Pisa in one day. That day we walked 30 kilometers.
In winter when I visited the city with my dad, there was not a single tourist, and it was obviously very cold. For that trip I told my dad to look for cheap hotels so as not to spend too much money and we stayed in a B&B inside the wall; the “cheap hotels” my dad selects are no such thing when compared to mine.
In winter the bad thing is that many places are closed. With my father I could neither climb the towers nor enter the most important churches. The good thing is that we practically had the city to ourselves.
Lucca is famous for being surrounded by a wall, built between the 16th and 17th centuries, which remains intact. Today the wall has been turned into a park, with three kilometers to cover by bike or for a walk.
It is also an excellent place to contemplate a panoramic view of the city and its surroundings. It has six entrances: Santa Maria Gate, Elisa Gate, San Pietro Gate, Santa Anna Gate, San Donato Gate, and San Jacopo Gate.
One of my best friends is from Lucca and she decided to get married in August 2017; She asked me to be the translator for the ceremony since they required it because her husband is Spanish, and I decided to organize a trip with Diego since he only knew Rome. I hate traveling in high season, but the occasion called for it. We visited Livorno, Pisa, Siena, Firenze, Lucca, and Milan.
Pisa is crazy crowded at any time of the year, in Siena there was the Palio, and Firenze was also full of people. So, arriving in Lucca was happiness.
I was surprised how the city changes from winter to summer, it’s impressive. There are few tourists, so it does not become overwhelming at any time.
We stayed in a house/hotel outside the wall, which was a 20-minute walk away.
We had free bikes, and we took advantage of them to go around the city. Lucca was what I enjoyed the most of this trip.
We were able to climb the towers, enter the Duomo and le chiese di San Michele e San Frediano. The view from the towers is beautiful and the best thing is that the entrance to the sites is cheap compared to the rest of Italy. Think that entering any site in Italy costs you at least 10 euros. Here it cost us 3 euros to climb the two towers without queues or too many tourists.
We also found very cheap restaurants (for northern Italy) and for 15 euros or less we ate more than well.
A funny anecdote is that I found a house that was like a cultural center or something like that in which there were bathrooms and whenever I wanted to pee, we went to that house; there were some older people, but they didn’t say anything. So, it was my public bathroom during the stay.
In short, Lucca is a city with a special charm and it is not overcrowded with tourists, so you can enjoy it, even if it is summer.
