Travel Log: Lucca, Italy

I hope you are having a wonderful week so far! I want to continue my Italy series of travel logs, today featuring the second city visited on our recent trip: the historic walled city of Lucca. You can see the first travel log on Siena here. Lucca is located in the Tuscany region of Italy, between Cinque Terre and Pisa, can trace its roots back to the third century BC, and has a wall surrounding the original city similar to what we saw in Siena. Since we were still waking up early a few days into our trip, my husband and I enjoyed early morning walks on top of the wall and through the city streets before meeting up with the rest of our group to explore. In addition to spending time inside of the walled city, we also drove out to a local winery in Montecarlo for wine tasting + lunch. We completed our visit with a wonderful dinner at the one Michelin star rated L'Imbuto. Please read on for more photos and details of our couple of days spent in the lovely city of Lucca.

We loved walking through the streets early in the mornings without all of the crowds. In this setting, you can enjoy the winding streets and colorful buildings.

The Basilica of San Frediano has a gorgeous golden mosaic facade and is tucked in its own square inside the old walls.

A few blocks away from the Basilica di San Frediano is the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, a large public square lined with restaurants and shops. This public square is actually circular, and can be accessed by four archways like the one below.

 After exploring Lucca's winding streets, we headed out to the Montecarlo region of Lucca for some wine tasting and lunch at Tenuta del Buonamico. We took a tour of the winery (their oldest bottles date back to 1964!), then enjoyed a multi-course lunch with several of the estate's wines.

After lunch I explored the winery grounds with my gorgeous girlfriends Debbie (@jetsetjebbie) and Erin!

We finished our visit to Lucca with dinner at the one Michelin star rated L'Imbuto. We chose the tasting menu, and below you can see a selection of the dishes we enjoyed.

I hope you enjoyed this photo tour of Lucca. It truly is a beautiful city with so much history to share, and I absolutely recommend a visit if you are planning a trip to Italy. Please stay tuned for more Italy posts on the remainder of the cities we visited: Modena, Parma, Florence, Amalfi Coast, Naples, and Rome. Thank you for visiting my blog today, and be sure to leave me a comment on your favorite Italian city that you have visited or would love to visit!