Il Dolce Viaggio: Pistoia and Montecatini

There was supposed to be a Wednesday market in Lucca but we weren't going to take any chances after some disappointments earlier in the trip. We made sure to get some food in our stomachs at one of the cafes in Piazza dell'Antifeatro before we left the old town. The omelets were tasteless and had the texture of egg beaters and the prices were obscene, but that's what you get for eating in a tourist trap.

The listed market was north of the walled town in a place called Foro Boario, just before the bridge that led over the Serchio River. When we arrived we could see from the street there was just an empty shed. There may have been a market there some other day, but not today. We got lucky because when I was studying Google Maps to make sure we had come to the right place I caught sight of an icon not far away labeled Lucca Market. We drove over there and from a distance could see the telltale canopies of an outdoor market. At first it seemed to be another boring clothes and dry goods market but then at one end we encountered a pretty good selection of produce and rotisserie vendors. I was able to find my grilled rabbit and we got some fresh fruits and vegetables to go with it. I guess whatever website I had pulled my information from had mixed up Foro Boario, the Saturday farmer's market, with this market which was open on both Wednesday and Saturday mornings.

I had two stops planned between Lucca and Florence. The first was Pistoia which had its own Wednesday market but only until one o'clock, so we needed to get on the road quickly. Not long before we reached Pistoia I spotted a beautiful looking hilltop town to the north and made a note of the name on the exit lane - Montecatini. Getting into Pistoia was a bit frustrating as the centro storico was right in the center of the city and the GPS kept trying to send me through a street that was closed for construction. Eventually I switched off the GPS and found a street parking spot within walking distance of the center. At first the centro storico seemed to be deserted, somewhat like Carrara had been. The old buildings and churches had character but seemed to be a little dilapidated.

Things started to look up a little as we continued to move deeper into the centro storico. We began to see market stalls although there was no sign of any comestibles, only clothing. There was some interesting statuary in the down of both the classical and modern variety. The fourteenth century church of San Giovanni Fuoricivitas displayed vivid Tuscan Romanesque black and white striping.

The Piazza del Duomo is right in the center of the old town. It had been taken over for a blues festival and a large stage was backed up against the facade of the town hall. Hundreds of blue classroom chairs were set up in orderly rows in front of the stage. The Cathedral of Saint Zeno dates back to the tenth century but has been renovated and reconstructed several times. The little streets around the piazza appeared to have been decorated for the festival with colorful banners stretched between the buildings on either side.

Pistoia had turned out to have an interesting historic center but we had been completely frustrated trying to find any food items among the market stalls that were scattered around the streets. Eventually we wandered into an art gallery that was exactly the kind we love, a haphazard place with paintings covering every inch of wall space and odd pieces of sculpture cluttering the floor. We were the only visitors and eventually we got into conversation with the gallery owner who had lived in the United States and spoke perfect English. She shared some information about Pistoia and gave some recommendations for other towns in the area we should see. One of the towns she spoke most highly of was Montecatini, the very place we had spied from the highway and made a note of. That pretty much iced our plan to retrace our path and visit that hilltop village.

The gallery owner also directed us to Piazza della Sala where we would find whatever food-related stalls were open at the market that day. We had somehow missed that square but when we arrived there was just one lonely produce vendor and no sign of any prepared food. The regular green grocer in the square had a more colorful and interesting display.

We were just forty minutes from Florence so we figured we might come back that evening for the blues festival and see Pistoia in its full glory. Some quick research informed me that Montecatini had two parts, Terme which was a mid-sized modern town at the base of the hill and Alto which was the tiny hamlet at the top. Terme was famous for its spas which we had no interest in, we just wanted to explore the picturesque town above. The two parts were connected by a funicular which would allow us to avoid worrying about parking at Alto. We drove back west for half an hour until we reached Montecatini Terme but when we arrived at the funicular it was closed for a mid-day break. Rather than wait for an hour we just followed the road up to Alto and had no trouble parking in a spacious lot just outside the village. After a short walk we came to the upper terminal of the funicular where there were amazing view over the lower town in the valley.

Montecatini Alto was so small that there was only one real piazza that every street eventually led into. Piazza Giuseppe Giusti was lined with restaurants with outdoor tables and featured a war memorial monument as well as the romantic, castle-like Teatro dei Risorti.

The restaurants were already beginning to close and in fact our first choice in the piazza turned us away. We ended up in La Torre just a few doors down and had a very satisfying lunch. Ian discovered a hearty stew called ribollita which was based on bread and cannellini beans flavored with onions and a variety of greens. He cleaned his plate which is unusual for him and the dish became his go-to order for the rest of our stay in Tuscany.

While we were waiting for our food I walked up the street that exited the piazza to the north. From here I had an unobstructed view east over the Val di Nievole to the hilltop town of Serravalle Pistoiese, about the same size as Montecatini Alto and sporting two distinctive towers.

As we were walking back towards the car along the road just west of the village we saw what looked like a castle atop a hill on the southern side of the old town. We decided to extend our stay in Montecatini Alto long enough to climb the hill and have a closer look at the castle. This was an attractive residential area of the town and I noted with amusement that one building had been recently remodeled with incomplete plastering to display a ruin aesthetic.

The castle turned out not to be a castle at all but a clock tower, a solitary remnant of a fortification that once stood in this part of the town. The original watch tower was converted into a clock tower with a six hour face in the nineteenth century. The hour hand of this type of clock completes four revolutions in a day. As we descended in the direction of the parking lot I caught Cleo under an exuberant bloom of pink oleander, a fitting conclusion to our visit to this peaceful yet spirited hilltop village.

The final stop on my planned itinerary of the day was the town of Prato, now practically contiguous with Florence due to recent decades of urban sprawl. Prato of course had all the usual accoutrements of Tuscan cities such as a castle and a Duomo but the only feature of interest to us was that it has one of the largest Chinese communities of any city in Europe relative to its size. This high concentration of Chinese diaspora in Prato is a relatively recent phenomenon that is a product of the "fast fashion" industry. Prato has a long history of being a center for production of clothing and textiles and during the 1990's Chinese entrepreneurs began to move in to take advantage of the existing infrastructure. They brought in their own workers from China, both documented and undocumented, and a heavily concentrated Chinese community was born along Via Pistoiese just to the west of the old town. This seemed like a great opportunity to visit a Chinese supermarket and stock up on snacks for the kids and also have dinner in an authentic Chinese restaurant. The only problem was that we had recently finished a late lunch in Montecatini and we weren't going to be interested in dinner for a few more hours. I decided that the best course of action would be to press onward to Florence and check into our Airbnb and then drive back to Prato for dinner and shopping. If we had enough energy afterwards we could even keep going to Pistoia and check out the blues festival. If I had thought things through I would have realized that was a little too much inconvenience just for dinner at a Chinese restaurant and we would have just stopped in Prato for shopping and had dinner in Florence.

Once we had gone through all the hassle of traffic and parking in Florence I wasn't thrilled by the idea of getting back on the highway again. To make things worse the GPS was now giving me an estimated time on the road of almost an hour. I'd compounded the problem now by passing by Prato the first time. If I begged out of it now then we'd miss seeing the town completely. I decided to bite the bullet and we began the drive to Prato. It was even worse than I had imagined with heavy traffic jams and long tie-ups at toll booths but eventually we made it there. Once we got to the right area it did feel surreal seeing Chinese language signs everywhere and streets that looked like they had been transplanted from a Beijing suburb.

We visited two supermarkets which presented an interesting fusion of goods designed to appeal to both Chinese and Italian preferences. After buying way too much Chinese merchandise Mei Ling picked a restaurant that displayed its specialties in a glass case at the front. I wasn't very impressed with the food but Mei Ling and Cleo were happy and that was the most important thing.

We got back to Florence very late and the ZTL was off so we decided to see if we could find any free parking close to our Airbnb. That idea also worked out very poorly as the streets were narrow and filled with obstructions of various kinds. Cars seemed to be parked in every available space and we concluded if we did find anything open on the street we were at high risk of getting towed even if we couldn't identify anything illegal about the spot. I searched for the closest parking garage and found one that closed at eleven, which was about five minutes away. We had just passed it and I raced back through the convoluted network of one way streets until we got around to it again. As we approached the attendant was beginning to lower the metal door and I honked my horn at him. He beckoned us through and looked at us wide-eyed as we pulled the car into the garage. "You guys are very, very lucky" he said slowly. The daily rate he quoted us wasn't exactly cheap but it was a lot better than what we would have paid at one of the hourly garages outside the ZTL. We decided to leave the car there for two nights and staggered back to our Airbnb to collapse into bed. I'd made pretty good decisions the whole way through the trip up to that point but I had definitely paid a price for that first little slip-up. There was no point dwelling on it now because we still had to be up early the next morning for a full day of exploring Florence on foot.