Breakfast in the garden, return the car and hop in a taxi to the train station. I catch a 10:41 train
and change twice (getting harder with my suitcase now loaded with two bottles of olive oil and four small bottles of homemade lemoncello and grappa from Frances Lodge) before arriving around 1:30 in Lucca. I drag my suitcase through the streets (a nuisance to me and those around me when pulling over cobblestones and brick) for about twenty minutes before I find Bed and Breakfast Evelina. I feel like I’m living in a third floor NY walk-up, but Guilio comes down to help me with the bag. It’s a lovely set up, with 5 bedrooms, a living room area, breakfast/eating room and small terrace with a nice view, herbs growing all along the balcony edge, and the fragrance from the orange tree below in the street. I change into much lighter clothes and shoes and hit the streets. Upon the advice from my hosts, I head to Pizza Da Felice to try a local specialty, cecina (chu-chee-nu):
It looks like pizza, but is actually made from fried, pureed chickpeas. Oily and oh so yummy. I’ll have to get another before I leave town. I then walk up and down the streets, which are (shockingly) filled with pasticcherias, salumerias, cafes and shopping. Every block or so is another piazza or corte, and every few blocks another church.
I’m in Italy, alright!
I make it down to the church, where there is a nightly Puccini concert (this is his birthplace). Tonight is two sopranos and a pianist, so I buy a ticket for tomorrow night, when there is a soprano and tenor. I think I will like that better. Walk through town some more, pick up a couple pair of wild tights, and head back to the room to rest for a bit. On the way, sport a market that is full of food porn. **FOODIE ALERT**
Head out again around 7 and walk to another of my hosts’ recommendations (his record is solid so far), a little restaurant at the back of a local market. It’s so cute, and I am one of two people eating. The other, a man having wine and meats, is sitting at a table right at the back of the store. I’m up half a flight in a separate restaurant area.
**FOODIE ALERT**
After chatting with the waitress/market cashier for a bit, I order homemade taglieri stuffed with meat, in a meat ragu. I order a glass of the house red wine and really love it. I have a few bites of the chewy , fresh foccacia along with. No need to dip this puppy in olive oil, it oozes out of the crust with each bite. Mmmmm. The pasta arrives:
I tenderly dig in (this time parmesan is recommended) and it’s so yummy. Tender, fresh, every mouthful an adventure in flavors. I savor each bite, and when finished, inform her that I’d like to order a secundi piatti! I have the beef stew with herbs and peppers:
It, too, it full of flavor. I can’t eat it all, but I make sure to sop up as much gravy as I can. The restaurant has filled up by now, and I pay and meander out. Erk! Is that a chocolate tart I see in the market? May I have a slice to go? Oink, oink. I head out and start back to my place when I think I hear angels singing. Is that a record or for real? I follow the sound right into a nearby church, where there’s a group of about 36 people up singing (including the man from the restaurant!), with the dozen or so in front playing all manner of instruments and the conductor waving his arms to control the whole process.
I take a seat in a pew, sneak a few bites of my tart and enjoy the serendipitous moment. After about 15 or so minutes of ear candy, I head back home, tired and happy.