Weekend 3: Getting Lost, but Not TOO Lost
Ciao tutti!!
My weekend was certainly wonderful. I ended up going to Lucca with my room mate, which is in the Tuscany region of Italy. It was a good three hour train ride but it was worth it!
Lucca is a small walled city that is full of great shopping, wonderful food (when I say wonderful, I mean it!) and a lot of streets that happen to look the same! I learned that last one the hard way.
The last time I came to Italy (which was three years ago) I went to Lucca with my parents. Thankfully, that time I was just along for the ride and didn’t have to figure out where the heck I was or how to get back to the train station. They did all of that for me. However, this time around, my room mate and I were pretty lost. We probably should have brought a map.
But we started the day out well, we found the city easily from the train station. We walked inside the walls and were greeted by a street bakery, selling all sorts of chocolates, candies, and delicious treats. We bought ourselves some hazelnuts that had been roasted and glazed with something sweet. They were to die for.
We started shopping, walking and wandering around the city. We then realized that we should probably stop for lunch at some point. So, after searching desperately for the restaurant my parents and I had eaten at when we were there, we gave up and ate at a small restaurant that was near the main piazza. We ordered spaghetti with chianti wine sauce and cheese. It was not what we were expecting, but we enjoyed it for the most part.
We then wandered up onto the wall for a while. We didn’t really know where we were but we didn’t really care. We were having some nice conversation and the weather was looking good.
We made our way back (somehow) to the main piazza, after hiding under a building as it poured rain for a good 10 minutes. Then we needed to find a place to eat dinner after watching a wonderful street performer play guitar and sing 90s music. Again, we found ourselves lost and looking for the piazza that had a lot of food (I wish I could tell you the names of these piazzas…we seriously had no clue what we were doing), which we eventually found. We both ordered pesto and it was AWESOME. We also ordered dessert.
Our train was leaving at 7:41 to Pisa for a connecting train to Rome. We decided if we left at 7:20 we would be able to find our way back and get on the train without a problem.
You can probably guess where this is going.
No such luck, we ended up on the completely opposite side as the train station when we exited the city. This led to panic, which led to us running as fast as we could (and me giving up somewhat quickly) to get to the train in time. We missed it. By probably about 5 minutes.
We asked when the next train to Pisa was. It wasn’t for two more hours. So we caught a cab, which was thankfully air conditioned, unlike our train would have been. We made it to Pisa with time to spare, and I even got to see the silhouette of the Leaning Tower without actually having to go to it. So that was a pretty productive trip.
We got to the train station when Mallory realized her water bottle had leaked all over her purse. This included the hazelnuts that we decided to save for the train. So her purse was wet AND sticky. We just started laughing hysterically because seriously, this WOULD happen after having such as successful day.
Anyway, it was a good day for the most part, and we can look back on it and see how hilarious it is that we missed our train and everything. We made it on our train back to Rome, which was the only thing that mattered.
Moral of the story: get lost in a city, but not so lost that you miss your train!
Ciao for now!
-Lydia