Lucca for a week

[Feelingblue77]

Hello!

We have a week in Lucca at the end of the summer, me, DH and adult DD.

Any recommendations for our itinerary? Planning a day in Florence and visit to Pisa possibly?

Never been to the area before, won't have a car but happy to use trains etc.

Activities, restaurants, places to visit - any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much.

Lucca is beautiful!
If you can I would recommend hiring bikes (readily available) and cycling round the flat city walls, pausing for lunch / gelato.

It is easy to get to Pisa for the day too - the Botanical Gardens are close to the leaning tower and well worth a visit.

Sounds fab @tortiecat we love cycling (leisurely!!) do you think we would need to pre book bikes or just hire when we are there?

Pisa sounds great and botanics!

Just hire when you are there in Lucca, there are lots of places.
If you are going to Florence you will need to pre-book entry into everything. It is a very special place but can get very crowded.

You can get to Cinque Terre easily by train and take a ferry to see the coastline and villages.

We did a week outside Florence a a few years ago. Pisa is worth ticking off the list but I wouldn't spend more than a day there. Lucca is lovely but quite small. Florence is amazing and you could fill a week there. San gimignano is gorgeous.

Italian drivers are absolutely fricking mental.

Recently back from 5 nights in Pisa which we used as a base. If you're flying into there it's a fairly easy flat walk to the station for the train to Lucca as long as you don't have much luggage or there's a shuttle. I loved Pisa and Lucca, both compact and very easy walking cities. We did the Cinque Terre and even mid week last month it was heaving. We considered it dangerous at one of the stations as the volume of people couldn't be cleared from the platform. Insane. The towns are nice with great views but I thought over hyped and very touristy. Seen better in Spain and Croatia. Florence is also totally doable on the train and is fabulous but if you've never been you'd need several days to do it justice.
We'd go back because the train service is excellent and there's so many more places we would have gone to on the train if only we'd had the time.

Agree with PP - San Gimignano is lovely, we also enjoyed Arezzo and Siena

Siena can be reached by train but San Gimigniano not. Vinci is also interesting to visit. There may be bus tours running out of Lucca though to some of the hilltop towns, if not from Pisa. A short hop by train is Montecatini, a spa resort with mini-golf, thermal baths, nice architecture and a lift up to the high point at Montecatini Alto.