This is where things get a lot less detailed. We are down to the last couple days in Italy and squeezing every bit out of it. So without much more ado, here’s some pics of our wonderful time in Lucca!
Lucca is a very pleasant walled city just outside of Florence. We picked it as a nice place to spend a few days with Chris and Leah, high school friends of Cory’s who now live in the UK. Chris and Cory are both celebrating their - gasp! - 50th birthdays this year, so the timing was ripe for a fun meet-up somewhere cool.
First up in Lucca was the Torre Guinigi - the Forest in the Sky. Forest is a pretty loose term, it’s not a lot of square footage up there, but very cool nonetheless. This tower was privately owned by some super rich family, in a time when the super rich were all building themselves nice little towers to show off how awesome they were - much like in San Gimignano. Very few of Luca’s towers remain, but luckily this is one of them. No one knows when the trees were planted up there (Holm oaks, for those of you paying attention), but there is evidence showing they already existed in the 1400’s.
It’s a fun climb of 233 steps to reach a very small little garden with a tight walkway all around to take in the amazing views.
After the cool tree tower we strolled the streets and hit up a few cathedrals, as you do. Lucca has a couple that house full mummified bodies, so I was keen to see at least one of those. We chose Santa Zita, whose story is one of the nicer ones for a saint of ye olden times.
Zita is the patron saint of Lucca, and also of domestic servants, maids, food servers, and lost keys. She lived in the 1200’s and began her domestic servitude at age 12. She worked as a domestic servant for many years, known for her sunny demeanor and work ethic. She was also known to give leftover bread from the richies’ kitchen to the poor. Legend goes that one day a fellow servant ratted her out for smuggling bread out of the home she worked at, but when the homeowner confronted her and demanded she open her apron, a whole bunch of flowers fell out instead. BOOM!
By all accounts she lived a full life and died at age 60. At the moment of her death, church bells spontaneously rang out across the city.
Fast forward a few hundred years and we exhume her body in 1580, only to find that it has been miraculously mummified, though no specific mummification treatment was originally applied. In Catholic terms, this means her body is classified as ‘incorruptible’ and a sign of her saintly status. She was officially canonized in 1696. Why the wait? I don’t know, and neither does Google.
As is tradition, she is now on display in the very same church where she devotedly prayed during her life. So we went, and the church is lovely and old and amazing. Photographing her corpse felt crass this time, so I didn’t, but I can attest she is indeed there and mummified. If you’re madly curious you can find photos online pretty easy. We did however photo lots of other stuff in the church, and also in the few others we visited in Lucca.
And then here’s a few randoms…
Wandering the streets after dark…
And what else do you need?
A little bird who joined us for coffee
Our rooftop patio which we used quite a lot, to the surprise of everyone - the weather was supposed to be much worse than it in fact was.
A poem about garbage
Couldn’t quite reach the knocker this time…
Strolling into the piazza, minding our own business, and then…
Rolling Stones bobble heads be alarming when unexpected
Last dinner together. GIANT TRUFFLE RAVIOLI