A chance meeting on Bus 21 in Salzburg leads to . . .

For the most part, our trip has been carefully planned out. We devised an itinerary, made hotel reservations, and decided on a few major things we wanted to do in each place. (Actually, by "we," I mean that Susan did all those things). But occasionally, we are able to be spontaneous. (And we will need to be again, the week after next, since we have not finalized our plans for the week between our departure from Rome and our arrival in Paris -- but that's another story).

Today's story begins in Salzburg, back on the 15th, when we were on the 21 bus from the Bloberger Hof into town. A few stops after we had gotten on the bus, another family of English-speaking foreigners boarded -- a Mom and Dad (about our ages), an older daughter with nose firmly planted in a book, and a younger son, bursting with energy. They were just like us... only Canadian!

Somehow, a conversation was started, and it turned out that their family is from the Toronto area, and the kids, Sarah and Alec are within months of Margaret's and John's ages. They are spending a few months in Italy, in Lucca, and after hearing that we would soon be in Florence, Andy and Kim (the parents) invited us to spend a day with them in Lucca, which is just over an hour to the east of Florence by train.

Florence is full of art treasures and amazing museums -- many more than we could see in the four full days we are staying here -- but it's been a long time since we spent any time with another family with kids. So we decided we'd skip some of the museums and picked a day (Thursday) for our visit and hopped on the train, hoping for the best.

The train ride was itself something of an adventure. We bought our tickets at a self-service electronic kiosk, and we think we probably bought the right tickets, but they were so cheap (10 Euros for the family to go to Lucca and back) we think we might have made a mistake. As it happens, no one ever checked our tickets (though I dutifully validated them on both legs of the journey), so we'll never know.

The train was old, dirty, and a local, so it stopped at every village and cow-crossing between here and Lucca (and a few that are a bit out of the way, too!). No announcements were made at any stop, and, for the most part, we could not see the names of the towns at which we had stopped. It was all very unnerving. But we had gotten on the correct train after all, and it terminated in Lucca, so we got off when everyone else did, and after a few moments met up with Andy, Kim and the kids.

The kids bonded instantly. John and Alec started running around, playing tag, and generally acting like nine-year-old boys, but they did pause for this picture.

Margaret and Sarah started talking about books.

Don't they all look cute together?

Andy led us on a "greatest hits" tour of Lucca. There was a Roman excavation under what was once Lucca's cathedral. Then we were off to the current Duomo, St. Martin's, where we paid our respects to the Volto Santo, an ancient crucifix, which was, according to tradition, carved by Nicodemus. After this, we admired the facade of yet another beautiful, marbled church, and then it was off to lunch.

Our hosts took us to a local, hole-in-the-wall pizza joint. The pizza was excellent, as good as (or better than) what we had on our first night in Venice. But the real treat was something called "cecina" -- a sort of baked pancake made out of chickpeas and who knows what else. It was great. And the whole meal, including sodas, set us back less than 11 Euros, which makes it the cheapest meal we've had out on our whole trip. And it was one of the best.

After lunch, we walked to the old Roman ampitheatre, which is now a piazza, which retains the oval shape of the original theater. Apparently some of the walls outside one of the entrances date back to Roman times, but we were never quite sure which ones. They all looked old to us.

Here's a random shot of John (near the "canal" or aqueduct in Lucca), looking happy as can be:

From there, we made our way to Lucca's old fortifications, which still form an intact ring around the old city. Unlike some of the old fortifications we've encountered (such as those in Conwy, in Wales, which we visited four years ago), these are wide (they are earthenworks with a facing of brick) and have a multi-purpose recreational path along the top. So we rented bikes and rode a couple of times around the city. The kids have been eager to rent bikes since we arrived in Belgium, and for one reason or another we had not yet managed it, though we've been in a number of good places for cycling (in Belgium or Haarlem, along the Rhine, or along the Danube or the Salzach). The Lucca ride was a real treat -- it was flat, highly scenic, and in an hour, we made it twice around the circuit of the old city.

The ride may have been the highlight for the kids, but the piece de resistance of Lucca must be the Torre Guinigi, the tower with the trees on top.

Naturally, we took some photos to take advantage of the unusual background:

Afterwards, we were glad to accept Kim and Andy's invitation to a simple Tuscan dinner at their flat. We had pasta, salads, and red wine out on their terrace. The girls enumerated points of similarity between them, and Margaret announced that they had between twenty five and thirty things in common (such as the fact that they both have close friends who are left-handed). The boys played on the game boy and watched "Fairly Oddparents" in Italian, seemingly finding it quite as funny as they would have done had they seen it in English.

Wiped out by our full day of activity, we took the 7:32 train back to Florence. This time, we had a clean, modern (double-decker) train, which had video screens and audio announcements informing us of where we were stopping. Still, no one checked our tickets.

ciao,
Joe