An Italian Job
Part 1 - A strike, an Italian parkrun and lovely Lucca
My wife Fiona says I am obsessed with parkrun. Well, I’m not as obsessed as some, for example the ones who not only run every parkrun they can in a year in the UK, but also seek out the ‘extra day’ parkruns that some other countries run on days other than Saturday. There are some who, this year, will run on Christmas morning at 9am in the UK then take a flight to Poland later in the day to run the Polish special day parkrun on 26th December. Then back again in time for Saturday’s regular run. No, I’m not like them, except… OK, I’m a bit obsessed. I know how many I’ve done (395 at time of writing) and can remember the name of every one of the 146 different event locations I’ve been to. I’m working on where to go in the next few weeks (weather permitting) and where that might mean celebrating my 400th run and 150th event.
So, what has this to do with Italy? Well, Italy is one of the countries that has parkruns, and is somewhere I’ve wanted to return to for a while, having only been once for one day to Rome a few years ago. I’ve also had a fascination with the leaning tower of Pisa since I first saw images of it as a child. With a free weekend coming up, and needing to plan something to do, I suggested that we head off to Tuscany to run the Mura di Lucca parkrun and also visit Pisa and Florence. The plan was accepted and Fiona worked out the flights and hotels.
That’s how we came to be getting up at 6am last Friday and driving to Stansted to take the Ryanair flight to Pisa. The flight was delayed , meaning we would arrive in Pisa at around 3.30pm and still give us plenty of time to get the train to Lucca, where our Friday night hotel was booked. We arrived and went to the information desk at the airport where the woman sold us tickets for the shuttle to the station and mentioned something about a strike. Just go to the station and see if there’s a train…
As an aside, the shuttle is outrageously expensive. 6.50 Euros each for a 1km journey that is walkable. To be fair, it was raining and cold and the walk wouldn’t have been fun.
We arrived at the station to see a whole slew of cancelled trains on the overhead boards. There must be a bus, we thought, but after a wet ten minute walk to the bus station the man behind the counter sighed and said that the buses were also on strike. Taxi? he suggested, but a quick internet search suggested that would be about 60 Euros. Definitely a worst case solution. We returned to the station, past the crowd staring mournfully at the list of cancelled trains and into the queue for the ticket office. This ticket man was far more helpful. He told us that the 17.50 train to Lucca would definitely run, if we didn’t mind waiting for an hour. We didn’t mind and went for a coffee while we waited. As we’ve seen before, the trains in mainland Europe are cheaper and, strikes notwithstanding, more reliable than ours. The 50 minute journey to Lucca cost 3.90 Euros each and we rolled into a damp evening in the old city with only a ten minute walk to our B&B. We travel very light and just took underseat luggage with us so walking with our stuff wasn’t an issue.
The B&B, the Relais Inn, was in a quiet street and, like many of the cheaper places you can stay in Italy, was in an old building with high rooms and limited opening hours for reception. Our room was large, with the only real issue being that it was a bit cold and the heating was beyond our control. It was comfortable enough and, after heading into the night with a list of recommended restaurants and having a lovely meal, we settled down relatively early. The owners of the restaurant were also the waiter and chef. It was the most expensive meal of our trip, but probably the best quality. The advantage of where we were staying was that the walk to the start of Mura di Lucca parkrun was about 400m, and we headed off just after 8.30am in our apricot coloured parkrun running shirts to find it.
For those of you with a bit of Italian, or maybe one of many other European languages, you have probably worked out that Mura di Lucca means “Walls of Lucca”. The Latin word survives in English in the word “mural” but is the basis of a word for wall in Celtic languages as well as the Romance languages. Anyway, the 5K run does indeed take place on the walls. If you’ve been to walled cities, like York or Chester, you would be surprised by this as they are far too narrow and often have parts missing. The Lucca Renaissance era walls are very different - they are fully complete and the top is wide enough for cars in two directions on a roadway that runs between beautiful avenues of trees and across the gates that are used to enter the city. Only service and police traffic is allowed on the wall so it is intended to be used by walkers, runners and cyclists like a huge circular public park. It offers great views of the city in one direction and the surrounding area in the other.
We arrived and met a few tourists having their photo taken with the parkrun START banner, like this one:
There are always quite a few British tourists in addition to a smattering of Italians. There were more than the usual number this week due to the scheduling of the Pisa Marathon the day after. The hardcore runners use a gentle parkun the day before the race as a way of keeping their legs moving.
The run itself is fabulous - the walls are 4.25km round, so we had to do a short section clockwise before looping round one of the bulwarks and doing a full lap in the anti-clockwise direction. I ran really well compared to my recent struggles, clocking an OK 28.32 without over-exerting myself. The previous night’s rain had gone, leaving a chilly but dry day behind.
After the thank yous and goodbyes we found a cafe for a quick coffee and snack then headed back to the B&B for a shower and change before we headed out to wander round the city. It really is a fabulous place - narrow streets, churches, shops and many, many cafes and trattorias. The area called the “anfiteatro” is fascinating. Like a piazza, but circular, on the site of the old Roman amphiteatre.
One of the restuarants we had been recommended was there, but it looked a bit pricy so we decided to look for somewhere else. There were many options. We wandered past a place called “La Bottega di Anna e Leo”. I was intrigued because Leo himself was outside eyeing up potential customers. I could tell it was him because he had a lifesize cardboard cutout of himself in the window. There was also a sign basically saying “No paninis, no pizza, no WiFi, just proper food”. This intrigued me so we looked at the menu which was reasonably priced for a tourist city. We then checked the Google reviews. They were pretty good, but we like to check the 1* reviews to see if there were recent problems. This is where we struck gold, because the owners did not hold back in repudiating the allegations of these particular customers.
That was it, I was in. We went back later, and it was full inside, but the outside terrace was encased in clear plastic with a decent roof and patio heaters so we tried it. The food was, indeed, very good. As was all the food we had on the trip. I’ve put a list of places at the bottom of the blog.
Before dinner we had returned to the hotel via the walls, this time walking rather than running. What a beautiful place - highly recommended.
Sunday morning dawned and we decided to maximise our time in Florence by getting an early train. We aimed for the 09.30 and arrived at 09.15 with two people in the ticket office queue in front of us. We decided not to risk the machine in case we messed up, but after the first lady had bought the tickets for her and her friends the second one seemed to be causing an issue. I picked up something that sounded a bit like Queenchi Bambini - now I didn’t know if this was 5,15 or 501 but when a troop of cub scouts appeared behind us and the ticket lady had to get on her phone I started panicking and went to the machine. Thankfully it worked in English and I rattled through the payment and got the tickets at 9.28. Then we couldn’t find the way to cross to the far platforms - it was a cunningly hidden underpass - and we ended up using our parkrun skills to just about catch the right train.
Compared to the night before, which was pitch black, the journey to Florence was largely scenic, although it was foggy in places, in the top deck of the kind of double decker train we never managed to design for in the UK.
By 11am we were in Florence for the short walk from the main station to our next hotel.
Photos © Fiona Fellows 2024
Cafes and Restaurants:
Ristorante Lucca in Tavola, Via S. Paolino, 130, 55100 Lucca - restaurant, slightly above mid-priced. Recommend the veal and fish - the delicate lemon sauce on the seabass was partcularly good.
La Dogana Lucca, Via Francesco Carrara, 18, 55100 Lucca - café, interesting pastry selection, mid priced.
Pult, Via Fillungo, 42, 55100 Lucca - café and restuarant. We had sandwiches in the café part, which were superb.
Osteria La Bottega di Anna e Leo, Via S. Frediano, 18, 55100 Lucca - Traditional Italian food, mid priced, good quality. Recommend the beef in red wine and the cheese board.
It was probably “quindici bambini” - 15 children.
Lovely Lucca - great to read this, Tim. Buon natale!