Okeefereport: Traveler #7

When we left Venice after two, three nights accommodation…I really don’t recall, two I would guess…our plan had changed. Florence, or as the Italians call it Firenze, had always been destined to be our next stop. Then when Alice put forward her protestation that she was museumed out and that Florence was museum land squared and I could find no argument. A new plan was formulated in which a brain weary traveller could pause and smell the flowers. The centre for this plan was Lucca, a 16th century walled town in the heart of Tuscany from which we might even venture into the countryside for some of that idolised dining and cavorting in cypress groves.

So it was that we set off on our most ambitious and least booked trips on Italian rail which still seems to run to Mussolini’s clock. The first leg, from Venice to Firenze, I could have set my watch by though that boast is weakened in face of my watch’s habit by this time of changing the date at midday rather than midnight. In Firenze we set a record by buying machine dispensed tickets onward to Lucca and finding and boarding our train all in the 18 minute crack Mussolini time gap. Yes… yes we spent only 18 minutes in Florence but at least we have been there. Now I should explain that one doesn’t present tickets to board a Italia train nor to depart, rather an inspector with a hole punch sometimes comes by and asks to see it. The train to Lucca was pretty full when it left Firenze. By the time the conductor came just short of Lucca there were only Alice and I and a Japanese gent with a bicycle left in our car. We presented our tickets and he began a tirade about putting them into the yellow machine at the station. Our promises to do so did not mollify his temper one bit and eventually we understood that this was what we should have done back at Firenze. Our promise to do so next time barely settled him but what option did we have, and we had tickets, and he had punched them. Needless to say we were always attentive to this rule thereafter and I recommend that you too take this lesson on board when travelling on Italian Rail.

Now Lucca was probably where we experienced our most difficult approach to booked accommodation. The online advice was to go to the Tourist Information Centre within the walls and ask for directions. Well the Rail station was outside so we set off toward the wall and breached it exactly as its designers had planned for an enemy. Fortunately the soldiers who otherwise would have been pouring boiling oil were having the day off. Now inside we found the tourist information centre who were well manned, and womaned, but had only one computer, essential to any inquiry. They gave us a map on which they pointed out the route to our accommodations outside the wall. Setting out once more to climb over this barrier we were flummoxed and sought local assistance. The old boy took our map, turned it around a few times, consulted his friend eventually discarded it indicating that we should go back in a whirlpool like motion. It took a while but eventually we realised there were tunnels through the wall to accommodate cars which could not climb over as we had so far done. Outside we found ourselves in a world of traffic with scant consideration for the pedestrian let alone one, rather two, with back packs and wheelie bags. Eventually we found our home and settled wondering whether a taxi wouldn’t have been a better idea.

It took a while, in fact all the while, to learn not to be lost outside the walls. It was much safer to be lost inside where we enjoyed this pastime in the pedestrian ruled environment. Then we found the shop that sold the compasses and our travelling lives took a change for the better. No longer would we stare at maps knowing that we were in the ‘Piazza del carmine’ as that sign on the wall plainly indicated, without knowing in which direction to proceed to attain our goal in ‘Via Fullungo’.

The African brolly traders must have had a similar though obviously far more sophisticated device. Invisible in fine weather they would miraculously assemble their molecules to appear beside you with the first drop of rain. An excellent service that would have been most appreciated if it had not been for their overweening persistence and the three folding brollys back in the luggage at the hostel. It did rain here, not enough to spoil the parade but enough to annoy the tourist who has little concern for crops or water levels and hates to get a wet head. Yes I admit that is my weakness.

Walls, rain and Africans aside we had an excellent time in Luca without accessing a single museum. In fact for the most part, we devoted ourselves to dining, drinking and taking compass readings. We discovered Prosseco Spumante, a great boon to Alice who was by now going through sparkling wine withdrawals and by yours truly who is as you know equally partial. Here we also discovered Tassecco, a cocktail made from Prosseco with Gin and Aperol according to a drunken recipe in my handwriting on the back of the card from the Lucca Drento Osteria a very popular (with us) place. Here we met these Welshmen who were appalled to be mistaken for poms.