Be Careful What You Wish For…

It’s official. I’m living in Italy.

I am settled into my apartment in Lucca and it is a fascinating place. It’s inhabitants built huge walls around the city in the 16th century for defense and they are still intact. Surprisingly they escaped destruction during WWII and now the tops are tree-lined avenues you can walk or bike around. I haven’t checked them out yet.

The streets are very crowded with tour groups, locals, cyclists and even cars now and then squeezing through it all. You can get run over just trying to look in the shop windows, so you have to watch all around you all the time.

My apartment is right in the middle of the old city and the location is superb.It is on one of the typically narrow streets with beautiful shops and cafes all around. It is old, old old – not modern American in any way. It is up a dozen steep stone stairs and opens into this front room.

From there is a kitchen, a decent size bathroom (biggest I’ve had so far) and 3 bedrooms. I took the largest bedroom and the furniture in it is also very large with lots of storage. Made it easy to unpack!

Alas, the internet connection is not working – which I am having to complain about yet again. I don’t think they know what to do about it as they don’t seem too familiar with it.

My open bedroom window is right above this shop

Big Bedroom

This cafe is right outside and is open VERY late. In fact, it was rollicking until after 1 AM last night! And that’s why I say “be careful what you wish for!” I was so tired that I went to bed early – about 9:30 and fell right asleep. But I woke up a few hours later and could hear voices and laughter for quite a while.

But I said all along I wanted to live like a local, not a tourist and this is the place. The large windows have shutters, so when you close everything up it muffles the noise some. But not altogether. However, it stayed nice and dark in the room, so even though I was awake for a while in the night, I was able to sleep until about 8:30 am. That did the trick.

Actually I did rouse, but not fully, around 7-ish when the family above me got up for the day. It sounded like an army preparing for battle, but then everyone seemed to leave and it got quiet again.

So I’ve been here long enough now that I don’t feel like I’m just on vacation. The “newness” has not worn off by any means, but I feel like I have time to relax and just live here like I would live at home. I don’t mind working at all – I just wish the internet would cooperate!

While I’m waiting for that today I will go exploring. I need to find the art store and also some cheap markets for things like soap and paper towels and trash bags. I don’t have room service – just instructions about how to put out the rubbish! Yep, I’m living in Italy!

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