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Ciao from Lucca!
Well we've been here for nearly three weeks, and on Thursday we finally move on from Lucca. Next stop - Bologna. I'm sure Bologna is wonderful, but I can't help feeling a bit sad at the thought of leaving this town. I love it here.
Lucca doesn't have a "big" tourist attraction - there's no Ponte Vecchio, Leaning Tower or Colosseum. There's no single area that feels overcrowded with tourists, and there's nowhere that you get the impression Italians themselves avoid. But the whole town is beautiful. You can happily just walk the streets or cycle along the walls, soaking up the ever-friendly and laid-back atmosphere.
The centre of Lucca, enclosed within beautiful Medieval walls, oozes authentic Tuscan charm. But when we arrived, Lucca was hosting its annual comics and games festival. When we first heard about it, we didn't think too much of it - "how big can a comics festival be?", we thought. Very big is the answer. The whole of Tuscany seemed to have descended on this quiet town, and brought its best fancy dress along too. Wandering around wherever there was space, we couldn't help laughing at the irony of the Star Wars or Call of Duty characters happily parading around these ancient walls, re-designed in the Renaissance by Leonardo da Vinci himself.
The next day, when we started Italian lessons, the festival had finished and the town quickly got back to normal life - consisting mostly of coffee breaks, and nightly aperitivo followed by groups of friends having dinner together. We quickly got into the swing of Lucchesi life with an agenda like that!
But we were unsure what we had signed ourselves up for at Lucca Italian School. What would the lessons, teachers and other students be like? Would we enjoy it there? We thought we'd better just sign up for the one week minimum and then see how it was going.
It's safe to say that our gamble of signing up based on the school building looking nice has really paid off. Our teacher, Eleonora, has managed to get us all to the level of being vaguely understood by the locals after two weeks of lessons. Now, the locals more often than not reply to us in Italian when we try to start a conversation. Not bad I'd say! And Eleonora has managed to do it with a smile, always laughing at our jokes (well mainly Josh's - she has been very confused at some of his habits, like eating "vecchio cena" for breakfast!)
And not only have we learnt some of the lingo here, but we've also met some great friends too. We quickly hit it off with our classmates Ronda, a garden designer from New York, and Stephanie, a doctor from Adelaide. Happily, it turns out that the phrase "fatti in casa" (most often seen alongside the dessert menu in a restaurant...) is also funny in America and Australia. With a shared sense of humour established early on, the lessons were a hoot, as they say Down Under. And we shared not only a desire to learn Italian but to absorb the aperitivo culture too. Aperol Spritz, anyone?
Two weeks later, Josh has had his fill of Italian lessons and he's now learning something new - Italian cooking. For me, I'll stay learning Italian for as long as I can. I guess I'm a serial language learner and wherever I go I love to be able to speak in the local tongue. Maybe my patchy French and Spanish can account for initial confusion in Italian lessons, but I think we're getting somewhere now... va bene! And onwards to Italy's red city to see if they still understand us there...
- comments
Steph Lovely post!! Glad to hear you are still soaking up the Italiano & not rejecting it like Josh & I!!!!