As I lay tucked in bed this morning with the shutters drawn, I consider my situation. I have two days left at the Hotel Davanzati and I had hoped to make two day trips, one to Pisa and Lucca by train, and other to Siena by bus. I have deferred as long as I could based on the unseasonable and increasingly unpredictable weather, but this truly is the end of the road. Whatever happens, I will have to make the best of it.
With a sense of resolve and the anticipation of disappointment, I flip the latch on the shutters and pull them back away from the window. As I lean out to get a better look, the cobblestones on Via Porta Rossa appear little more than damp, and the sky overhead is showing patches of blue. Hallelujah, hallelujah.
I don’t exactly know why it’s so important to me that I see these places bathed in sunlight. Like any traveler, I’ve experienced my fair share of rain. I do have an innate and nonsensical tendency to worry about the weather, but it rarely disrupts my plans in the end. Heck, I survived the torrential downpours that fell across England last summer, and had a mighty good time in spite of it all.
But Italy is somehow different. Anyone with any common sense expects dreary weather in Britain. It’s all part of the mystique. Is it even possible to imagine Brontë’s Wuthering Heights without the windswept moors and the dark, foreboding sky? Yet when it comes to Italy, and Tuscany in particular, the image in my mind’s eye is quite the opposite, constructed from picture postcards and pieces of Hollywood film. That book by Frances Mayes that they turned into a movie was called Under the Tuscan Sun, after all, not Under the Tuscan Rainclouds. I’ve been sold a bill of goods and I am here to collect!
I am confident all the way through my bowl of cereal and two breakfast pastries, optimistic on the walk to Santa Maria Novella train station where I buy a ticket to Pisa Centrale, and hopeful as the train pulls away and heads west, shortly after nine. Halfway there, sitting behind a young Italian woman who talks fast, loud, and incessantly on her cell phone, I notice dark clouds creeping in across the sky.
By the time we arrive, every trace of blue has been swallowed up by the storm. It’s raining so hard and the wind is so fierce that on the long walk to Piazza dei Miracoli, my umbrella is wrenched inside out. I take refuge first in a doorway and then, along with a host of other wet and weary tourists, in a gift shop facing the square.
When it becomes clear that the situation is unlikely to change any time soon, I run across to the ticket counter and buy a pass that allows me to enter five major sites: the cathedral and baptistery, two small museums, and the Camposanto. I pass on climbing the famous “Leaning Tower,” not only because it’s expensive, but because I just might slide off the side to an untimely death in this weather.
I enter the Museo dell’Opera first, and after looking out of the window to observe two things—first, that the tower really is smaller than one would expect, and second, that it really does lean—I pass the time pleasantly, surrounded by beautiful works of art, including a case of illuminated manuscripts written in square notation for Gregorian chant.
Heading clockwise around the square I stop next at the Museo delle Sinopie, which displays the preparatory drawings that were used to create the frescoes on the walls of the Camposanto. These were discovered underneath only after much of the structure was destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in World War II. Then come the baptistery and the cathedral itself, or “Duomo.”
It’s a lovely Romanesque church begun in 1093, but the central pair of bronze doors in front has been removed for restoration and the space covered with unattractive sheets of unpainted fiberboard. When a woman steps in front of me to take a picture, I reposition myself so that I can use the span of her multicolored umbrella to block it from mine. When life gives you lemons… make lemonade!
I enter the Camposanto last, eager to see the restored frescoes that were once damaged in the war. It’s a cemetery made up largely of stone sarcophagi. There is a large rectangular cloister with delicate stone tracery on the windows, and a grassy central courtyard, planted on the periphery with roses of pink, red, and yellow.
The frescoes that stand in relief against the brick wall are fragments to be sure. They are snatches of scenes that once depicted “The Ascension” and “The Crucifixion,” along with other Bible stories. But they are beautiful just the same, with attention paid to the small details of life that I find so appealing. In one, two carpenters use a cross-cut saw to slice boards from from a larger beam. In another, a woman in a brocade gown of pink and blue holds a squirming dog on her lap, as it gently bites her finger. And finally, there is St. Michael the Archangel, who stands with sword in hand at the center of what can only be described as “The Last Judgment.”
I should have seen that coming! How many does that make this week?
Still, my penance may be over at last because as I wind my way back out to the cloister and across the courtyard, I spot a feeble ray of sunshine coming from the sky overhead. The storm has passed, the clouds are breaking.
It’s 2:00 PM by the time I arrive in Lucca on a direct train from Pisa San Rossore station. I haven’t eaten lunch yet, so I’m starved. For me, the first order of business isn’t to admire the city’s fine medieval walls, which I pass under at Porta San Pietro. Instead, it’s to find my way to a restaurant called “Buca di Sant’Antonio,” which I had read about online. The problem is, the only map I have is one produced on my inkjet printer at home and the morning’s rain has reduced it to a smeared and sodden mess. As it is, I have no hope of finding Via della Cervia. I would ask someone for directions, but the streets at this hour are eerily quiet.
Opting for the safety of numbers, I decide to head towards Piazza dell’Anfiteatro instead. It’s the main public square, a discernable blob on the map, and there are bound to be dozens of restaurants nearby. When at last I reach a curved section of wall, I know that I’ve arrived. I follow it to the left and enter through a deep gate lined with bicycles.
Inside, the piazza follows the oval imprint of an ancient Roman amphitheater. I stand and admire the jigsaw architecture and the uniform colors of the space — red tiled roofs above, shades of yellow stucco with green shutters below — before sitting down to eat under the awning at “Roma Bar.” I’m told that the pasta with sage butter is gone for the day, so I settle for tortellini and a mozzarella and tomato salad instead.
Once my stomach is comfortably full, I head off to find the Torre Guinigi, which as it turns out, doesn’t require a map at all. As I head south, away from the piazza, I can see the brick tower, with its famed oak trees on top, looming high above the surrounding neighborhood.
The climb up is an easy one, on wide stone stairs. From here, under a canopy of green, the city of Lucca lies at my feet, surrounded by the Tuscan hills. I can see the oval pattern of the Piazza dell’Anfiteatro, and behind it a striking mosaic on the façade of the Basilica of San Frediano. When my eyes drift down to the jumble of rooftops below, I discover a message scrawled in chalk that reads: WHERE IS THE HAPPYNESS?
Perhaps it’s an existential question, a plea for understanding. Maybe it’s nothing at all. In the here and now, however, I know my answer and it’s Italy.
Back on the street, it’s late afternoon and Lucca has awakened from its official midday slumber. The shops have reopened and tourists are beginning to file into Via Fillungo. I stop at Moka Bar for two scoops of gelato — lemon and pineapple — which I eat while window shopping.
I make my way back to Porta San Pietro and climb the steps there to reach the top of the wall. I decide to walk as far as my legs will take me, past the Cathedral of St. Martin and the botanical gardens. As I go, I hear the persistent “ching, ching” of bicycle bells. This comes not just from children who seem to delight in ordering others out of the way, but from everyone, despite the ample width of the gravel path.
Cyclists clearly take priority over pedestrians, and they are more ubiquitous here, and more dangerous, than Vespas in Rome. An extended family whizzes past and no sooner does the father ask the grandmother how she’s faring, then she topples over onto the grass, striking her head on the ground. I stop and offer the use of my cell phone to call for help, but thankfully she seems fine, just a little dazed.
About half way around, I climb down from the wall and meander through the center of town, back to where I began, past boutiques and bookshops and store windows filled with pastries, past the church of San Michele in Foro. By now, the sky has turned a brilliant shade of blue, made deep by the setting sun.
When I reach Piazza Napoleone, I stumble into a raucous celebration in honor of the local Carabinieri, Italy’s military police. Flags of red, white, and green are flying from every window, but oddly enough the song the band is playing is none other than “Stars and Stripes Forever.” It is an odd juxtaposition of the foreign and the familiar.
I’m tempted to linger and to watch. But it’s getting late and I have a train to catch.
On the journey back, in a nearly empty car, I lean my head against the window and watch the world go by. My iPod is in my lap and a track from Il Postino is playing in my ear. The morning’s rain seems a long way away.
It’s been a good day, after all.
The Independent Traveler 