The beautiful Tuscan city of Lucca is not even mentioned in my old Rick Steeve’s Italy guidebook, which may explain why I never heard another American voice the whole day we were there. Fine by me! It did make it into the latest edition, however, so that could change. Our mission, and my son’s obsession there, was to find the best tortelli lucchese as laid out in this article from the New York Times, The Riches of Lucca. We ended up at Da Francesco, which was delicious! It seemed like our whole trip centered around the next great meal, with long periods of walking and shopping in between. The ideal vacation!

A really enjoyable afternoon was spent biking around the remains of the city’s outer protective wall, with a large park on the outside and the town on the inside. Lucca was a very rich city in medeival times, due to it’s importance in the silk trade, and there are some really lovely houses and gardens to look down into while leisurely burning a few calories. The other thing we really noticed there, besides how many large groups of young Italians were there (with many young men sporting very long straight hair a la my high school in the mid 70’s) was the numerous free flowing water fountains where the locals were filling up their water jugs and bottles. If you have a car, Lucca is only a quick hour drive from Florence -IF you are clocking an average of 140 kilometers/hr on the autostrada. Hey, you have to go with the flow!