tuscany lucca travel biking eating [trip style = sightseeing + wine tasting]

For our second installment of Euro Month, we're heading about an hour inland from the Cinque Terre to Tuscany. Tagging along with friends to the fortified city of Lucca, we discovered the joys of strolling through antique markets, winding our way into magnificent piazzas, eating out and trying our hand at cooking the region's cuisine and trying to burn off the calories biking!

For us, Lucca was all about activity and eating: biking and walking, followed by wining and dining. Even with the activity, I left a little plumper---not sure how Italian women stay so slender with croissants and pasta cat-calling them on every street corner. To compliment our immersive eating adventures, I wish I could say we actually went to wineries, which was actually part of the plan, but we didn't. After a long journey cycling along a busy road with huge big rigs passing us just a little too close, we opted for a safe type of wine tasting: with our meals at restaurants.

Biking biking in lucca {Lucca is a fortified city with a unique feature: you can bike, walk or run for approximately 4km along the top of the walls around the city}

lucca towers {Looking into the city from the outer walls ~ the towers are left over from days of old and used to be where prosperous silk-trading families took up residence}

lucca biking {More biking along the base of the 12ft fortified walls}

lucca looking inward {Typical scene from the top of the walls looking in}

biking lucca aquaducts {Biking outside the fortification checking out the old aqueducts}

Eating lunch in lucca {One of the most fun lunches while in Lucca: after biking for a few hours---and a fruitless non-encounter with wineries---we found a restaurant on top of the city's outer walls. There we enjoyed a long lunch with pasta, salad and wine, then got back on our bikes and kept on riding! In this pic: our friends and fellow prosecco-lovers.}

lucca food menu {I had to take a picture of this menu ~ see if you can spot the reference to "carpet-shells." I have no idea what those are, but perhaps the joke's on me?}

eating in, in lucca {Enamored by the throngs of fresh food shops, we decided to make use of our accommodation's mini kitchen and eat in one night. In this pic: naked ravioli awaiting its sauce. Soooo good.}

lucca restaurant {After our "home"-cooked meal, we went out to this picturesque locale for some prosecco...}

night in lucca {Open-air drinks in a restaurant mid-piazza ~ there were so many I don't remember which one this was...I think it was Piazza dell'Anfiteatro}