"New Years in LUCCA" Lucca by edwis

From San Gimi we drove to the Cinque Terre, which is described in another chapter. After leaving the Cinque Terre, we drove the autostrada very quickly to little town of Lucca back in Tuscany, which is located only about 15 minutes away from Pisa. Along the highway we saw the white snow capped mountain peaks of the Ligurian Mountains (or the Apuan Alps) reflecting in the sunlight and made for a pretty scene.

Lucca is another walled-in city. We finally found an entrance and followed some alley way which takes us to the Palazzo Alexander, our hotel. This was a pretty nice and very accommodating facility. Everyone there was apologizing to us for the unusually colder weather they were having. In spite of that which didn’t bother us at all, we find the place still full of tourists.

Unpacking at the hotel, we notice that the zipper on my 20-year-old duffel bag from Lands End has broken open. Oh oh. In tiny little Lucca of all places, I find a shoemaker like two blocks away from our hotel. The bad news was that his shop doesn’t open as we were told, until “15 and 50”, which we figured out to mean 330pm. At 330 pm, the shoe shop clerk takes my bag into his rear workshop and returns about 10 minutes later all repaired. He has it all fixed as new. He looks at me and tells me the charge will be1 euro! I give him 2 and was so happy just to avoid a potential disastrous situation with damaged luggage.

Puccini
We take a walk around the old town and find a skating rink, band stage, and carousel in the main piazza area, all getting ready for some New Year’s Eve events. For our special New Year’s Eve event, we saw a poster earlier in the day in our hotel lobby, which was advertising some special Puccini (opera /arias) Concert to be held in an ancient basilica. Then we learn that this is Giacomo Puccini’s home town and then we notice that it shows everywhere. Even the rooms in our hotel, which didn’t have room numbers, but rather each was named after various Puccini operas. Ours was Gianni Schicchi – but we just kept referring to it as the ‘Johnny’ room.

The concert was limited to only 100 seats, so it was a very intimidate experience. This was a grand old stone church, with three aisles and regular dining room seats, instead of church pews. We bought our tickets at the door and sat in the fourth row, being about 15 feet from being face to face contact with the performers. What a grand group they were, great sopranos, tenors consisting of three beautiful ladies (1 being a Julia Roberts look alike) all dressed up in fancy evening gowns, fur collars etc. The one male was in a tuxedo and they all had voices that almost shook out the old windows. One of them was treated like some type of super star of some repute, but was unknown to us. There was a live full operatic orchestra plus a backup choir, who only sang the refrain responses during a one song from ‘Carmen’ the whole evening. It truly was one of the nicest events I have ever seen in my life. I didn’t even mind that it was so cold you could see your breath coming out of your mouth.

During one evening to escape the colder weather (now in the mid-thirties), we popped into a Salvador Dali exhibition that was going on. Not too much to like there. We also did a tour through the Palazzo Mansi – a local royalty’s old mansion that was very impressive. Their music recital room on the second floor was bigger that our whole house. Somehow this became our “culture trip” without our knowing it.

Getting tourist postcards in Lucca was a quaint little adventure. First you buy the cards off any rack in town. Then you have to buy postcard stamps that are only sold at certain ‘Tobacchi’ stores, and then you have to find only certain specially marked postal boxes for mail that leaves the country. Sending a few cards can take about 1-1/2 hours. Again here in Lucca we find that all the retail stores close from 1230 to 330 pm. Plenty of time for those long Italian lunch meals

We found that it’s ‘Buon Giorno’ all day, then at “15 and 50” it goes to ‘Buona Sera’

New Year’s Eve, back at the hotel after the Puccini concert, started off with some expected street noise of firecrackers. Then came the singing couples in the hallway (late), then they started to shoot off some champagne corks bouncing off the hallways walls while loudly laughing a good deal. Now, I have seen this in movies and/or TV situations, but never a real life experience like this next event - about three minutes after midnight, we hear a female guest voice in another room sounding with groans of ecstasy coming through her wooden door, across the hallway, and through our wooden door – “ah.. ah.., AAH!”. The next morning in the hotel’s breakfast room, Joan and I were looking around secretly from table to table trying to identify the noisemakers from last night. Only in Italy – Buon Anno!

Another day we walked around Lucca’s old amphitheatre from the 1st century BC. In the present day form, it has been filled in with shops and colorful apartments but still has many of the original walls intact. Today the area is known as the “Piazza dell Anfiteatro”.

In Lucca, during a day exploration, we found a nice quaint looking place that seemed to be a good restaurant choice for later that evening. Our hotel guy tells us that it is probably the best restaurant in town. Buca di San Antonio. We go there at 700 for dinner. Oops, they don’t open until 730pm; the owner’s wife takes us in anyway, sits us by a main fireplace in a little bar area, and we order 2-vino rosso locale. She then uncorks a bottle of Fubbiano rosso, 2002, leaves it with us and wanders off.

This was our big New Years Eve meal: We have a full Italian menu. antipasto of chicken liver pate with grilled Tuscan breads. Then the primo piatta consisted of risotto with pumpkin; then the secondi piatta; Joan has stewed wild boar with olives and a corn polenta (the first meat she has in 7 days and boy did she really order a meat dish!). Ed has roasted veal shank with spinach croquettes which looked like two green hockey pucks to us. When the meals arrived, we must have looked kind of bewildered so the waiter had to come and point to the item on the menu and then to us, so we knew which one and what we were having….. Mine was called “Stinco di vitella al forno”. Man, it was the best stinko I ever had!

Upon checking out of the hotel in Lucca, we take a short morning drive over to Pisa where we have an afternoon flight leaving Italy and going to Amsterdam. We are using an Internet only booking airline based in Amsterdam called Transavia. It flies only 2x a week from Pisa with 49e one-way fares. After worrying a little on the way to the airport if this airline actually existed, it turned out to be great.