ND76

Sadly, we overslepped and missed Mass at the Latin Mass chapel we would have attended near the Campo di Marte train station in Florence. So we checked out of the hotel around 1100 and headed for Lucca, where we would spend the last two nights of our Tuscan holiday. My wife’s maternal grandfather came from Lucca, so this walled city of almost 83,000 people is very special to her. According to the electronic signage on the A11 Autostrada, the westbound lanes were in a state of “blocco” due to an accident near the Lucca Est interchange. So, we got off the tollway at Montecatini Terme and drove the surface roads into Lucca. After some difficulty we found our lodging, the Palazzo Busdraghi, Via Fillungo 170, not far from the Porta Santa Maria at the north center of the city wall. Our room rate came with parking in a secured gated lot in a courtyard two streets away, so it was only normal that we would miss the turn to the correct street, and we ended up driving on pedestrian only streets into the middle of the walled city, when we were spotted by two female police officers. Sensing that we might be about to get a really big ticket, we initiated contact with the officers, with my wife speaking her best Italian and starting to shed tears. The officers, taking pity on us, put their ticket books away and directed us to the closest exit. We parked the car in a legal spot, got out, walked around, and doped out the correct route to the parking lot. Crisis averted.

After checking in, we took a long walk along the same streets where we had caused such havoc a few minutes earlier. Sunday afternoon was art, book and furniture market time in central Lucca, and lots of used furniture, vintage wood radios and Mussolini memorabilia were on sale. Lucca has its own weekly music festivals on Friday and Saturday nights, and, at the same hour that Bocelli and company were lighting up the stage outside Lajatico, Burt Bacharach was performing on the stage in a piazza in Lucca. Like other Italian cities, Lucca is filled with Catholic Churches, and we explored two remarkable houses of Christian worship, the Basilica of San Frediano (named for an Irish monk who became the first bishop of Lucca in the 5th Century), and the chiesa di Sacra Cuore (Sacred Heart).

After a siesta and a snack, we split up. My wife wanted to take another long walk around Lucca, and I wanted to go to the horse races. Ippodromo Federico Caprilli in Livorno, about 25 miles away mostly by toll highway, had first post at 2040 (it appears that most racing in Italy during the summer months occurs at night), so I drove down there. I drove without any difficulty to the address of the racecourse, which turned out to be the backstretch area. I parked my car, but could not find the entrance; fences surrounding the city’s large football stadium (local team AS Livorno was promoted to Serie A for the upcoming season) and rugby stadium frustrated my progress to the ponies. A helpful policeman, who was on the scene to direct traffic related to a rock concert taking place in the soccer stadium (a reggae band was playing and really sounding good as this was going on) dircted me to get back in my car and to drive to the road which ran along the seacoast, as this is where the entrance to the track was located. I found on-street parking about even with the top of the home stretch, about 300 meters from the entrance. Admission was €3.50; the track consisted of a lopsided oval grass course of 1,250 meters in circumference (about 6.25 furlongs), right-handed (opposite to the direction run in the USA) with the lighting system consisting of old fashioned metal light fixtures suspended over the course by wires. Half of the races were run at 1,000 meters (about 5 furlongs) out of a chute at the top of the backstretch (races were also run at 1,500 meters and 1,950 meters). The stands ran from maybe 150 meters south of the finish line to 25 meters north of the finish line; the walking ring was just north of and behind the end of the stands; betting windows were behind the stands, with a piazza behind them, containing stands for bookmakers offering fixed win odds (the pari-mutuel system was available for win, show, quiniela and trifecta wagers), and then behind the piazza a building called “Punto SNAI”, which is where the state-owned lottery agency operated off-track wagering with commingled pari-mutuel pools on other racetracks running in Italy (on Sunday night, the Tor di Valle trotting track outside Rome and the Agnano thoroughbred meeting outside Naples were going, along with trotting from a place I once visited, Montebello in Trieste, and a couple of venues I’d never heard of, including the trot races at Pontecagnano). Oddly, there was a book fair taking place in the piazza.

I stayed for the first six races on the seven race card, but only cashed two small show (piazzati) tickets. Horse racing is my passion, and I always have a great time, but I was getting exhausted and I had to drive back, and hopefully get the car parked in Lucca without further incident, which I managed to do. I got back to the hotel at 0030.