Travel memories: Lucca

I really loved Lucca. It's a beautiful city with so many interesting features. The first thing that we noticed on arriving there was that the place was full of marquees - they were setting up for the comics and games festival that was going to begin a few days later. While this made taking photographs of some areas difficult, I felt it added an extra dimension to the place.

We had a tour of the city, seeing Puccini's birthplace and statue, looking around the cathedral, playing "chap door run" with the old doorbells (OK, we didn't really ring them), avoiding the ubiquitous cyclists, and, of course, finding out where the public toilets were!

Then I explored by myself. I started in the centre of the city, looking around the shopping streets. I found some beautiful art nouveau details on one building.

And shops selling all sorts of things.

I went to a piazza where the buildings are built in an oval around the area where there used to be an amphitheatre. There were some nice souvenir shops here.

After exploring the streets I headed up onto the city walls. The area on top of the walls is a wide space of parkland, and has good views of the city and the area around it. I wish I'd had a little more time, as I'd have loved to walk the whole way around. I walked about 1/3 of the way then had to turn back. I also saw a lovely garden but couldn't work out if it was public or belonged to a hotel.