Lucca and Viareggio It Is!
May 16th, 2005 Posted by Lorenzo
Up at 09h15. Dressed/shaved/out the door at 10h00. Coffee-bar at 10h05. x2 caffe ristretti and raisin danishes at 10h06 and 13 seconds. It was Monday, so we forgave the shopowners for their latent service. But just this once. 
At 10h24 the usually punctual bus was nowhere to be seen. Had we missed it? If so, another wouldn’t be along for at least an hour-and-a-half. Not good.
Fortunately, it was only ten minutes late and we started the trip to central Montecatinni, delayed only by a passing train that held up the traffic for a few more minutes. We arrived just in time and managed to grab the 11h06 pulma to the beautiful and ancient town of Lucca. We decided to give the train a skip, because the drive to Lucca is such a beautiful one. We wanted to take in as much of the Tuscan countryside as possible. Well, it was worth every cent. 
Lucca turned out to be quite the place - we took plenty of photos.
Lucca is famous for it’s narrow cobbled streets and quaint secluded alleyways. It’s an altogether pleasant town to walk around in, but it must be a real pain to have to drive there. The fact that it’s surrounded by fortified castle walls prevents the town from growing outwards. I imagine many of the buildings started as single story and were built up to double and triple stories over time.
Despite being a working day, I’m proud to report that the German tourists were out in full-force. “Bless their little border-crossing hearts…” For lunch, we stopped at Pizzeria Da Felice, a 160 year old trattoria boasting some modest, although extremely high-quality fare. I recommend it to any of you prospective visitors out there (Germans too!).
After some more walking, we decided to head back to the bus area and grab the next one to Viareggio on Pasquale’s recommendation. That turned out to be a fan-tastic idea. First of all, the trip there included an epic mountain-pass voyage, where the driver pulled some impressive moves to guide our blue sardine can around some impossibly devious corners. The guy was an artist and the greenery around the mountain-pass was literally a jungle of joy to behold.
Once there, we dismounted and immediately bought the latest return ticket we could find without missing a stop-off back home: 18h00 sharp. It was 16h00. We had two hours to play with. Fine. We hit the strip.
It was more Miami than Miami. Palm trees, rollerbladers, hot chickas, you name it. Beautiful people and beach. Awesome. We even happened upon a familiar and welcome sign:
This was going to be a place to return to again sometime soon… 
But right now, we were on a mission to locate the Napoletano trattoria, La Rusticanella (another Pasquale-tip). Once we did, we settled in with a couple of slices of serious and a bottle of Becks™. Suffice to say that they made the best pan-pizza I’ve ever tasted. Naturally, we had to find a Gelateria that would do it justice. Not a difficult task on Viareggio’s toasty-coastline (or anywhere in Italy, really). Satisfied and sworn to next-day dietry, we headed out again.
Just before our time was up, we walked into a vintage music shop and picked up a couple of rarities (or at least they are back home). Namely, Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast and Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth both for €28. *schweet*
Our ride back was perfectly timed. We caught the last bus home and were the only ones on board - nice and spacious! 
In the immortal words of Hannibal Smith: “I love it when a plan comes together…”
