Pisa, Lucca, Volterra: whirlwind weekendery!

I celebrated getting a few job applications out and hitting first-draft revisions on a pair of articles by cutting out of Florence for a quick weekend. Originally I had planned to do an overnight in Lucca (with a brief stop in Pisa for the obligatory Field of Miracles stuff) but then I figured out that Volterra would be a reasonable detour on this route, and I'm glad I went. It's a pretty magical li'l hill town, and one whose culture feels... transitional right now, so I'm glad I got to see it while it still had that balance of daily life and tourist influx, before it becomes what San Gimignano has by now become. After the jump: my whiplash-inducing tear around Tuscany!

Voltera and the surrounding Tuscan countryside at dawn! It's true what they say: Tuscany is just a bunch of dirt with stuff growing on it.

First, the usual video, cutting all three spots together sporadically:

Volterra
Volterra has the guide book reputation of being a sleepy hidden gem among Tuscany's hill towns. And I'll say that, in comparison to San Gimignano (which I visited last summer) that is true. Where S.G.'s every inch is taken over by some tourist enterprise or another, Volterra has numerous areas that feel workaday and un-thronged. That said, it's at least starting to get busloads of day trippers around midday, and the main stretch is certainly looking to make connections with tourists. That's not altogether a bad thing; it gives you enough infrastructure to fill a day if you get tired of sticking your head into artisanal workshops, and it's not that hard to go up a road and perch on a stoop and watch the world go by. But it feels like a city whose character is changing, an inevitable effect of somebody like Rick Steves annointing it and sending travelers there. Nice to see it before it gets too overrun to maintain its character!

Art by the town church, sandwiched next to the town hall that blocked the church's access to the main square. RENAISSANCE ERA ITALIAN POLITICAL MANEUVERING WOOOO pretty trees woo too

I definitely recommend Annie Adair's walking tour of town - she's a smart, charismatic, thoughtful and assured guide with wide ranging knowledge (she's absolutely read her Richard Beacham!) that puts the town's Etruscan history in context. The only qualm I had: tours are a great way to meet fellow travelers, and I always think it's nice when they can be informed conversations, with participants asking questions and engaging in the tour. But I'm not super wild about the kind of person (which we had a few of on this tour) who goes on a tour and more or less lectures the guide/fellow tourists. Fella! It's vacation! You are allowed to relax and listen!

Great Roman theatre, where I learned that (this is so cool) they're thinking they have to reevaluate Volterran history, because the fact that the theatre was more or less abandoned after an earthquake (you can see here that they started turning it into a bath complex) meant the community didn't have much money, and thus was in decline. Just a few years ago, though, they found the remains of an ampitheater - where more of the spectacle (think gladiators/animals) entertainments took place that Roman imperial citizens loved way more than the weird Greek import of "theatre." So, now that they've found this ampitheater, a lot of assumptions about the culture's timelines have to be totally rewritten, and I think that is a rad thing about history THE END.

My room here was insanely comfortable, in a private home but with hotel-level amenities and an adorable yard/shared kitchen, one of the best nights' sleep I've had in my time abroad this summer. This would turn out to be very good, as (spoiler alert) Lucca was... more challenging in this regard. But that room was a nice microcosm for the town as a whole: windy and remote, it was a great retreat from many things, especially after 4 PM when the day trippers left and the town became an idyllic wandering ground. Breathing, peace, meditation. Good times.

The Balze! Cliffs that are frustratingly hard to capture via photograph but that give you a great sense of the sheer climb to Volterra that made it such a stronghold. This is a fun little hourlong trek out of town - best done, I think, at dawn.

Pisa

The Photobombin' Tower of Pisa

I did a quick one-hour walk through town before heading to the Field of Miracles (the Duomo, the Leaning Tower, and the Baptistry). It's a cool university town with a fun energy to it, even at 8 AM or so, and until you get onto the arteries that take you right to the Tower, it's not as thronged with cheap tourist crap as you'd think! The Field of Miracles, meanwhile, really does live up to its reputation: striking, lush, and packed with people from early morning on. I didn't climb the tower (seeing it from the ground seemed more the point) and ultimately made a quick shift to Lucca, which I really wanted to explore.

Also in Pisa: a mural from Keith Haring from a year before he died from AIDS. Beautiful, energetic, joyful, and across the street from a happenin' student-heavy caffe. NEAT, gang.

Lucca

Lucca's central feature is its wall, rebuilt after the advent of canon and gunpowder, when they realized you could blow a hole in the old city walls. The top of the city wall is now a city park, broad boulevards where people bike and walk at all hours, and it is extremely excellent up there.

Ah, Lucca. It was high on my list when I planned this leg of the summer, as I'd heard it was great food, great atmosphere, and great people-watching/energy. In some ways it lived up to all of that! And in some ways I did it a disservice by only being there for about 24 hours. This feels like a city that would benefit greatly from a settling-in trip like I tend to enjoy, and in fact if doing a longer trip to Tuscany with more day-trips into the countryside (wine tastings, olive oil factory visits, things like that) it might be a great home base. I had a delicious lunch, a friendly conversation with a couple of local college students on a break from their music program, and had fun wandering the town. The evening and the early morning were delightful, with beautiful piazzas full of people and a gentle breeze. I found a piazza in the evening full of beautiful people in their twenties and thirties, and joined them for an evening of craft beer. These were the good times. The roughest patches were midday, when the temperatures breached 80 (in May! I'm not ready for that!) and night, when I re-learned the reality of Italian mosquitoes.

The room was pretty gorgeous, though once the mosquitoes arrived it rapidly felt like a set for an Italian adaptation of Barton Fink.

I'd passed out in my room early, only to wake up around 1 AM as the neighbors turned on their TV full-volume; this meant I was awake enough to register the (approximately) seven million mosquitoes that were attacking me in my bed. For the next four hours, I would stay on alert, attempt to kill one (final tally: 5 killed), and settle back into bed, juuuust about to fall asleep when another mosquito would buzz my ears and set me off again. And thus passed the last five hours of the night.

Unbelievably charming citywide canals! Also extremely likely safe harbor for the demon mosquitoes who I will spend the rest of my life hunting relentlessly.

I mean, look: I have enough perspective to know that Lucca was grand, and that mosquitoes and heat can happen anywhere. I know that it usually takes 2-3 days to know a place well enough to start finding your routines and get off the cattle-path track that has you bumping into tour group after tour group. And that's why I'd like to get back at some point, because I think I just sort of missed it a bit. Next time, perhaps!

One thing you have to say (it is a legal requirement) is that any town with a tower that has an oak tree growing out of it has got some seriously good stuff going ON, so get with the PROGRAM.

All in all, though? This was a great sojourn (Volterra especially being something that fed my heart in a big way), and let me return somewhat refreshed and with a good perspective on what I love about Florence. More on that... soon!