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Florence is just a weekend, a quick train ride up on a Friday morning to visit my Uncle
Terry and Aunt Deb, who have flown in from Connecticut to visit Italy for the first time in their
lives, and to see their niece, of course. It is evening when they arrive, and I take them on a
walk to look at the Duomo, always such an impressive sight, as evidenced by my uncle’s re-
action:
“Oy vey!” he says, then pauses and adds, “Or maybe that’s the wrong word for praising a
Catholic church.. .”
We watch the Sabines getting raped right there in the middle of the sculpture garden with
nobody doing a damn thing to stop it, and pay our respects to Michelangelo, to the science
museum, to the views from the hillsides around town. Then I leave my aunt and uncle to enjoy
the rest of their vacation without me, and I go on alone to wealthy, ample Lucca, that little
Tuscan town with its celebrated butcher shops, where the finest cuts of meat I’ve seen in all
of Italy are displayed with a “you know you want it” sensuality in shops across town. Saus-
ages of every imaginable size, color and derivation are stuffed like ladies’ legs into provocat-
ive stockings, swinging from the ceilings of the butcher shops. Lusty buttocks of hams hang in
the windows, beckoning like Amsterdam’s high-end hookers. The chickens look so plump and
contented even in death that you imagine they offered themselves up for sacrifice proudly,
after competing among themselves in life to see who could become the moistest and the fat-
test. But it’s not just the meat that’s wonderful in Lucca; it’s the chestnuts, the peaches, the
tumbling displays of figs, dear God, the figs...
The town is famous, too, of course, for having been the birthplace of Puccini. I know I
should probably be interested in this, but I’m much more interested in the secret a local grocer
has shared with me—that the best mushrooms in town are served in a restaurant across from
Puccini’s birth-place. So I wander through Lucca, asking directions in Italian, “Can you tell me
where is the house of Puccini?” and a kind civilian finally leads me right to it, and then is prob-
ably very surprised when I say “Grazie,” then turn on my heel and march in the exact opposite
direction of the museum’s entrance, entering a restaurant across the street and waiting out
the rain over my serving of risotto ai funghi.