Day 18 in Lucca

Italy 2021

Giorno Diciotto

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l sole è brillante e il cielo è molto blu. (The sun is brilliant and sky is very blue.)

Abbiamo camminato le mura. (We walked the wall.) This is the weekend so Lucca is packed. It reminds me of Florence which is packed every day. Wednesday we are going to take the bus directly to the Florence airport so we do not have to fight the crowds in Florence

Abbiamo mangiato all'Osteria Nova per il pranzo. (We ate at Osteria Nova for lunch.) It is a new restaurant and had good reviews. Wonderful! Primo Dow had marinated/smoked salmon with guacamole on toast and second she had spaghetti martelli with prawns, bisque and pistachio. I had fish croaker tartare with pickled onions and pineapple. For the second course stuffed ravioli with duck.

We walked around in the afternoon. This time we visited the Ex Museo del Fumetto to see more of the cardboard exhibits inside. It is all part of the Lucca Biennale Cartasia – billed as the Biggest Paper Art Exhibit in the world. How do they do this? Most of the creations were outside and only blocked off with string! It was fun to see them throughout the city!

One of our afternoon treats is having a gelato. Gelato is lower in fat because it contains less cream and more milk, and is churned slowly resulting in less air and a richer flavor. BUT, gelato is actually different from the traditional recipe of ice cream because it is lighter, having a lower butterfat content than traditional ice cream.

Katia and Andrea went this past weekend to Piobbico to visit Andrea's parents. The house was built in 1793. It is almost as old as the United States. It is about 3 hours away from Lucca by car and 5 hours by train.

Just a quick review, for those of you who are new to this blog, about how we know Katia. Katia and her parents moved to Boston when she was young and she had a teacher in third grade whom she really adored. Later her family moved back to Italy. She and Bonnie (her former teacher) connected a few years ago on Facebook. This teacher that Katia adored eventually ended up in Spencerport where both Dow and I taught. We saw Bonnie at a retirement event about 10 years ago and she mentioned to us, when she heard that we were going to Lucca, that she had a former student who lived in Lucca. So we were able to contact with her using information from our former colleague, and the rest is history. We've become very good friends with her and her family and see them at least once or as often as we can when we are in in Lucca.