Art, art, Goose!

A jet lag day for Judy, recently arrived from California, so we took it “slow”. On our adventurous walk outside the medieval walls of Lucca we discovered art in unlikely locations- some extraordinary Liberty Style houses along a busy street with buses and trucks whizzing past, and cake. Liberty style architecture is the Italian version of ‘Art Nouveau’ which flourished between 1890 and 1914. The name “Liberty” has nothing to do with freedom, but comes from a guy’s name who owned a department store of the same name which he opened in 1874. I don’t get the connection. Perhaps Liberty imported decor from the Far East that was used in Art Nouveau decor? The ‘Girasole’ house (featured) is particularly lovely example of Italian Art Nouveau.
Continuing our walk, we happened upon a very sleek, spartan, very modern building with a cursive sign across the top of the door “Damiano Carrerra”, and a couple of smaller round signs with “Atelier” under his initials. What is this place? I don’t REALLY know what ‘atelier’ means so I looked it up. Thanks Wikipedia: “atelier (French: [atəlje]) is the private workshop or studio of a professional artist in the fine or decorative arts or an architect, where a principal master and a number of assistants, students, and apprentices can work together producing fine art or visual art released under the master's name or supervision.” Mike googled the place and we learn that it is some fancy Pasticceria that opens at 3:00 pm. We decide to continue our walk, then come back for an afternoon tea and cake. Well, we return at 3:30 and the place is PACKED! Inside, outside, a line out the door! It took awhile to figure out that you first decide what you want, then order/pay, then sit and wait. All the tables were packed. There was hardly room to move about inside. Just inside the entry was a large glass case, and another glass case along the wall - showcasing museum quality works of cake art. Unbelievably gorgeous. The glass wall separating the ‘showroom’ from the ‘workshop’ allowed you to observe the busy hive of bakers baking and decorating cakes. There were 3 giant machines in the back corner of the ‘cake ‘lab’ with constantly flowing chocolate: white, milk, dark. All the bakers were wearing elegant ‘chef’ uniforms, complete with the hat. One occassioanlly would grab some chocolate with a specialized tool for decorating. People milled about with ‘dropped jaws’ taking pictures and videos. It was a bit like a carnival atmosphere. There were no available tables, it was noisy, and we couldn’t imagine eating such beautiful cake, so after examining all the wares we left and got apertivi at a quiet bar down the block. BTW, Damian Carrara is a 40 year old metal mechanic turned art baker, who has written books and starred on TV food shows. One of the most elegant cakes is in the extra.
The other extra is the Alpha Goose that tried to impress us with his bravado to show us who was boss. Mike feels morally compelled that I include him in my blip, because we dined on his relatives in Mortara, the Goose town.