My first stop in Italy was Lucca. It’s about a 45 minute drive from Florence. It’s a small city and beautiful. The medieval walls that surround the city are all still in tact. So, you can bike all along the top of the walls in about 1 hour.
It’s a beautiful, quaint city that’s not as touristy as Florence or Pisa. It’s romantic to walk along the walls. Don’t miss it on your trip to Tuscany.
The food in Lucca is Tuscan. So, some of the foods I saw were prosciutto, pancetta and pasta with meat sauces. Some pastas had mushroom sauces because they were in season, too.
For dessert, you’ll find cantucci (or biscotti) with vin santo, or sweet wine. You dip the hard cookies into the sweet wine.
One of my favorite things in Tuscany are the roasted potatoes. They are always perfectly crispy and melty inside, like in the picture below. It’s probably because they roast them with the most flavorful olive oil and they soak up all the flavor.
