Italy Day 3 - Lucca
Took the train from Florence to Lucca. They don’t really tell you which train you need to take, and then they don’t tell you which station is coming up. Luckily the guy sitting next to me was nice enough to tell me when I needed to get ready. At the train station is where another adventure began. I hailed a taxi and told the driver where I needed to go – Hotel Ilaria. We drove partway through Lucca, and then back out towards Pisa. I aked him where the hotel was, and he said it was on the way to Pisa. When we pulled into the Hotel Elise, I told him it wasn’t my hotel. Long story short, he told me not to worry, apologized, and got me to my hotel.
I walked into the hotel and was immediately greeted by a young and incredibly friendly staff. They were able to guess who I was without hardly having said a word. I asked if anyone else from the tour had checked in, and went to go chat with our guides – Mike and Huibertha – as I waited for the others. After sitting in the lobby for a while and reading some books (in Italian), I realized I was hungry. Being almost 2:30, I asked the staff to recommend a place to eat. They called ahead and had the restaurant around the corner hold the kitchen open for me. Wow! Delicious pasta and a t-bone steak. I returned to the hotel to find Fred and Lisa had checked in, so we went out for a walk, found a bar, and had some afternoon wine and snacks.
We returned to the hotel after wandering through town a bit, expecting the others to have arrived. Apparently they got the same recommendation for dinner, and I ordered something light. Some wine, appetizers, and being with friends made for a very enjoyable dinner. It was so nice to be dining with friends again! After dinner, we set out to explore Lucca and find another bar. Along the way, we found a concert in one of the piazzas – a full orchestra and opera singer, on the steps of a buiding, in the open air, under the moon at 10:30. You just don’t see that in the US.
We eventually found a bar and had a couple drinks while watching a ridiculous Italian beauty pageant on TV. Ridiculous becuase all the women were gorgeous, wearing skimpy bikinis, and had to do the “talent” portion in a bikini. Some of them didn’t really have much talent – fixing a woman’s ponytail, coreographed martial arts fight, and hitting a target with a bow and arrow – from ten feet away! The real entertainment came from getting Lisa all riled up with our (okay, my) mysogynistic comments.
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