According to Robert Frost, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.” But, ooooo, how I love a wall! And today I knew I was getting a great one in Lucca. Imagine my surprise when I got a second unexpected one in Pisa!

Pisa and Florence used to be major rivals. To my eye, it looks as if Florence won. They have major world-famous art and architecture and are almost synonymous with the Renaissance. But, as Meredith pointed out, show one hundred Americans the most famous building in Florence and the most famous building in Pisa, and way more people will know what is in Pisa.

We got efficiently on a morning train from Florence to Pisa, a trip of about one hour. From the train station to the “Field of Miracles” is about one mile, but we broke that walk up with a much-needed bathroom break at a cafe/bakery that forced (forced, I say!) me to buy a hot chocolate and cream horn. From there, the walk was much more relaxed. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and there were a few puffy clouds in the sky. What a great day.

And so we arrived at the world famous “Crooked Tower of Pisa” (or something close to that). I’m pretty convinced the tower was leaning from the weight of the 217,000 people all crammed on one side of the Field of Miracles, all taking pictures of someone trying to hold the tower up, or, new to me, having the tower look as if it’s sitting in an ice cream cone. We took a couple of photos of the tower, and then fled west toward the front of the church and the baptistery, if only to get away from the crush of people. And this, again, is on a random Wednesday in March. What it must be like in July….

We got to the quieter space between the baptistery and church, and took time to admire both. They are very pretty buildings – simple compared to Milan’s cathedral (but really, what isn’t?), and less crammed-in than Florence’s Duomo. The tower gets all the love and attention, and it does lean noticeably and shockingly over, but the church complex deserves admiration too. And both the baptistery and church also clearly leaned during construction, but had better corrections made as they went up. Build heavy buildings in a marshy area, and you get some code problems.

As I was looking around the west end area, I noticed people up on the city wall behind the baptistery. One, I didn’t know people could get on the wall, and two, I didn’t know Pisa still had a wall, let alone one that was tourable. I sent Mer into the ticket area to ask about it, and she came out with directions to the wall tour – just beyond the baptistery. We set off in that direction, and as we approached the path to the front of the church, there was a commotion at the doors of the building. A bunch of people in various medieval costumes came out of the doors and lined up for the start of a parade. It was the celebration of Pisa’s new year (Florence has the same new year’s day), and we had, by sheer dumb luck, stumbled on it. There were officials and armored guards and drummers and trumpeters and flag bearers and crossbow soldiers. The group was mostly men, but there were a few women as flag bearers and one woman as a well-dressed noble. The pomp was much fun to see, and the parade walked right by where we were standing. Another happy win for travel experiences.

On to the wall! We got our surprisingly cheap (seven-dollar) tickets for the wall from a friendly woman, and up we went. The walls are by far the best place to see the sweep of the Field of Miracles – there was almost no one on the walls, and there was no one in our way, either for viewing or for taking pictures. The wall went all along the west side of the Field, where the wall ended and we had to turn around. But our tickets included the entire wall, which is about two miles in length. We walked about a quarter of that before we descended to start heading back to the train station. We stopped long enough to get this odd tradition of eating food between breakfast and supper. It was unusual, but I quite liked it. Maybe we’ll try it more often.

We got back to the station and took the thirty-minute train to Lucca. Our hotel is all of two hundred yards from the station, so that was nice. And our hotel is only about a half-mile walk to an entrance to the still-preserved Renaissance walls, where we could make our way into the old city. The city walls are fully intact, run over two miles, and are now a wide and well-used public park space for walking, running, biking, and relaxing on and along. The walls are not particularly high (I’m guessing about thirty feet in most places), but they are very thick. Cannons have a way of persuading wall builders to go wide.

The inside-of-the-walls part of Lucca is a wonderfully chaotic den of buildings. While I wanted to see a couple of buildings my brother had recommended, I also wanted simply to wander toward whatever caught my eye. The first stop, not terribly surprisingly, was a gelato store that also made crepes. Mer and I both got Nutella crepes with gelato. They were great, but I got laughed at for breaking not one, but two forks in eating mine. I guess I was enthusiastic.

I then trended toward strolling north to get to a church with a mosaic facade, but along the way got distracted by small alleyways and a large square and a big church that was still open, so we went inside. Further along north, I got distracted by the Palazzo Pfanner, which had a door open to a beautiful formal garden. Intrigued, I went in and got us tickets to the public part of the house and the garden. The Pfanners made their fortune as brewers, but also had a couple of generations of doctors in the family in the early twentieth century. So we got to see a kitchen, a formal dining room, a ballroom, a bedroom, and a room containing a bunch of original early-twentieth-century medical devices. Let’s say I’m very grateful for modern medicine. Yikes.

The gardens had a rose garden, lemon trees in pots that could be moved inside in the winter, a large fountain, about twenty statues, manicured lawns, and at least two kitties. I got to pet one. That’s worth the price of admission, right there. That ended the tour, as the upper rooms of the house are still lived in by the family.

From the Pfanner home, we made our way to the church with the mosaic on it. It’s the best outside mosaic I can recall seeing, and may be one of the best I’ve seen outside of Ravenna, Italy. It’s a huge mosaic of Jesus and two angels, with smaller depictions of the twelve disciples. It’s pretty great and worth seeing, and the church is next to an oval piazza that preserves the shape of the Roman arena that was here centuries ago. It’s lined with outdoor seating for restaurants, and it’s fun to be in an oval “square.”

We popped up on the walls for a section, covering about a half mile of the walk. We then came back down for supper at a pizza restaurant on the large square we had seen earlier. That ended my specific goals for the day, so Neuf mentioned she wanted to get some gelato, so we found an open store near the gate for our hotel street. The gelato was excellent, and Meredith went for the gusto by getting another crepe. Hey, it’s vacation.

That wrapped up Lucca for this trip. It would be fun to wander the center some more and climb a tower or two inside the walls. But it was a pretty great day to shout from the walls about how fun these places are.