Venice diary, entry 5 of 5 Venice, a last morning, mid-August. The heat was already in the stones by eight, and I left the room with the shutters half-open behind me, the way you do when you mean to come…
Archives for August 2026
My Days in Pisa and Lucca
I arrived in Pisa prepared to be unimpressed, which is a foolish way to arrive anywhere. It is the traveller’s small vanity, this wish to be above a thing that everyone else has already loved, and Pisa punishes it gently….
Getting Around and Day Trips from Pisa and Lucca
Getting around Pisa and Lucca is one of the quiet pleasures of this corner of Tuscany, and it asks very little of you. Two walkable historic centres sit half an hour apart by train, a small international airport feeds straight…
Best Photo Spots in Pisa and Lucca
The best photo spots in Pisa and Lucca are not, in the end, the ones you already have on your phone from someone else’s holiday. Yes, there is the tower, and yes, there is the tourist crouching on the lawn…
Best Time to Visit Pisa and Lucca
The best time to visit Pisa and Lucca is late spring or early autumn, when the light is long, the walls are made for walking, and the coach crowds at the Leaning Tower thin out by mid-afternoon. I have been…
Where to Eat in Pisa and Lucca
Where to eat in Pisa and Lucca is a question with a happier answer than most people expect, because almost nobody comes here for the food. They come for a leaning tower and a walkable wall, eat one indifferent lunch…
Where to Stay in Pisa and Lucca
Where to stay in Pisa and Lucca is the one decision that quietly shapes everything else about these few days, and I want to save you the wobble I had the first time. The short version is that I sleep…
The Leaning Tower of Pisa: Tickets, Climbing and Tips
The Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of those sights that survives every cliché thrown at it, and I say that as someone who arrived a little braced for disappointment. It is smaller than you expect and stranger than the…
Best Things to Do in Lucca
The best things to do in Lucca reward a slow pace, and the town seems built to enforce one. Inside a ring of Renaissance walls, the streets curl and double back, opening without warning onto a piazza shaped like an…
Best Things to Do in Pisa
The best things to do in Pisa reach a good deal further than the one photograph everyone arrives for. Yes, the tower leans, and yes, you should go and stand under it. But Pisa is a proper city with a…
Two Days in Pisa and Lucca: The Perfect Itinerary
Two days in Pisa and Lucca is, to my mind, the most quietly rewarding pairing in this corner of Tuscany, and the itinerary below is the one I keep returning to. Pisa gives you the marble and the myth, the…
The Complete Guide to Pisa and Lucca
Pisa and Lucca sit less than twenty miles apart in the flat green plain of the Serchio valley, and yet the two of them could hardly feel more different. One is a river city that most people arrive at in…
