Just me, in Italy!: Medieval walled cities and the like.

Well hello again. We went to Lucca last weekend and I am just now blogging about it this weekend. Anyway, Lucca is about an hour train ride from Florence. It's a tiny city with medieval walls surrounding the entire city. Look here.

Here they are. Those are also my roommates. Maddy and Ali.
So you have to go through the walls to get into the city through passageways and tunnel type things. Here is what I am talking about.

It was a rainy day. But the city was still really cool. I think that if I was going to live in Italy I might choose Lucca. You walk into the walls and see the giant church...Like this.

We went inside the church. It was really cool. There was this giant cage looking thing inside that held the "Volto Santo" which was a wooden carving of Jesus that was said to have been carved by Jesus' disciple Nicodemus who placed Jesus in his tomb. The carving came to be in Lucca in the year 742 which, I guess, according to the Bible places Nicodemus in Lucca on the exact same date. Some say its not that old. But either way it seems to inspire at least a few people so I think it is doing some good. I thought it was cool. I was just wandering around the church and everyone had left me so I just kept wandering and ran into the wooden Jesus himself. It was really cool. Apparently this is a major site and we didnt even know!

After the church we went to the baptistery where we took a tour of old roman ruins underneath the church. It was ok. I mean it just looked like rocks. But they were really old rocks. Which make me wonder.. how old are the rocks that you touch everyday? Here are the ruins..

There were still intact mosaics from the 3rd century or something like that. After that we wondered around the town all day. I was really nice and relaxing. We stopped at a candy vendor on the side of the road,

and ate some lunch. I had macaroni (that looked nothing like macaroni) with just olive oil and a sprinkle of cheese. The noodles were made from some sort of nut flower.

Then we ventured to the city centro. It is actually called the amphitheater because the buildings are in a perfect circle. I of course could not get all of the circle so this will have to do.

Then we passed an old lady trying to get on her bike. I love the look of old people. If I could I would just take pictures of them all the time. I shamelessly snapped a picture of her.

That was our trip to Lucca. Simple and quite. Just like it should be. It was wonderful, I really enjoyed it despite the rain. Here are some more pictures for your enjoyment.