And once again, Lucca got invaded by an army of comics afficinados, game fanatics and cosplay creatures. In 4 days nearly 150 000 attended, which means that during the week-end we probably had close to 50 000 visitors a day. Which is quite a bit when you know that the normal population of the historical center of Lucca is less than 10 000.

As usual the best part was just to wander around town, especially between Piazza Grande and the Walls, and just admire the costumes.

We did buy tickets though, which allowed us to go into the various white tents set up accross the town, so we could spend more money on comics, of course, nearly all in Italian, and a huge array of comics or anime related gadgets. Our son's bounty included a Pokemon T-Shirt, Shadow Sonic and Brock figurines and some Pokemon cards (I'll let you guess what his favourite cartoon is).

The best way to get the tickets while bypassing the enormous lines is to buy then on the previous day, after 5:30pm at the tickets offices in town or near the station. Multi day passes are also available, but you don't save much money with them, and you still have to queue, although not for too long, on the day you are using them in order to activate them.

The weather was beautiful, which was good for some of the most lightly dresses characters (as Edvarg Endel above left, who was wearing only a tiny pareo).

More links, more photos:Flickr Group

posted by michel, 2009-11-15