Pisa and Lucca

Can’t speak as to the Lucca logistics but Pisa was easy to do as a train stopover visit on that route.

Lucca is not a city to see with a quick stop. Do a day trip from Florence and enjoy the place. It has the best walls in Italy and you can rent a bike to ride around the city on top of them. It has a several large important churches , and the look and feel of the city is wonderful, and then there's always lunch.
I'd say the same about Pisa, but one can't do everything. After stowing the baggage, at least allow time to walk from Pisa Centrale station to the Piazza dei Miracoli. On the way you can go through the Medieval market area, and through the famous Piazza dei Cavalieri. If you can get a train from La Spezia that stops at San Rossore station in Pisa, it is a lot closer, and there's luggage storage at the Info Center within the Piazza dei Miracoli.

If you stay into the evening in Lucca you can attend a Puccini concert, as a Lucca is is hometown and there are nightly concerts.

FWIW, the nightly Puccini concerts are performed by different opera students from the local music school. Quality of the singers varies greatly from night to night..

For me, Lucca deserves more than a quick stop or even a day trip. As others have said, there are beautiful churches, the relaxing wall around the city, and the Puccini concerts, which are wonderful. I am not certain, but I don't believe Lucca has baggage storage at the train station. Buon Viaggio!

Lucca is one of my favorite cities in Italy. Pisa is a 1/2 day or day trip at the most. The tower and church are the only attractions. If you stay in Lucca, I would recommend staying inside the walls for the best experience. In addition to a Puccini concert, you can see his house and have a drink at the bar he frequented. Via fullingo is the main shopping street but I got my favorite leather purse at a shop off the main area. Lazzari's was the name of the place if I remember correctly. I also took a cooking class in Lucca. It was one of my favorite days of that trip.

Thank you all for your input. Thinking maybe we will leave the Cinque Terre area early morning and make the stop in Pisa, spending the morning there, on the way to Florence. Then maybe on another day, make an early afternoon trip to Lucca with possibly remaining in the evening for the concert before returning to Florence. That should give us close to two half days and one full day for Florence.

We are doing this exact trip from CT to Pisa and Lucca in August. And while we are sure Lucca is worthy of a night, we just don't have the time. We did a stop over in Siena last year for a few hours and were glad we did. Yes it would be lovely to have had more time, but I would have rather had the few hours we did than not at all. As for checked luggage in Lucca, here is a link we came across on another board. We plan to rent bikes here as well.
https://www.touristcenterlucca.com/servizi_dettagli.php?quale=2

We checked our bags at the Lucca train station for the afternoon a couple weeks ago. If you enjoy biking then visit Lucca and bike around the walls. We only spent an afternoon in Lucca on our way between Florence and the Cinque Terre and felt that was plenty given all the cathedrals and bell towers we had already seen. We did two laps around Lucca on the walls in an hour.

We also did Pisa on our way from CT to Florence and it was pretty easy to do, especially if you're mainly interested in the tower and maybe grabbing lunch along the way. We were there in May and the area around the tower is so crowded and touristy that we just wanted to get in/out. We found a great lunch place on a side street that we wandered down. And the bag check at the train station was easy. I think we arrived around 10 a.m. and left by 3 p.m. for the train to Florence and felt like it was enough time.

We spent eight days in the hills above Lucca, in a rented farmhouse. It was quite possibly THE most enjoyable week we have ever had, largely thanks to Lucca. I suppose, in total, we spent three full days within the city, including a very enjoyable walk around the old walls. The old town itself is a warren of narrow streets, made narrower still by tables and chairs outside the many sweet little cafes. The churches are beautiful and, though not as grand as Milan's Duomo (for instance) they are in some ways more atmospheric and evocative, being a more intimate experience.

Pisa? I was underwhelmed. Apart from the tower and surrounds, I didn't enjoy it much, and the tower area was so crowded after the relative peace of Lucca that I couldn't wait to 'light a shuck'. It's probably just me, because a 'few' people seem to like Pisa!

We then carried on to the coast, where we parked, walked onto a beach, then promptly executed a quick 180 back to the car. Coming from Oz, where our favourite beaches are gorgeous AND empty, I'm afraid acres of loungers and parasols in neat rows gave us the shudders ;-)

Puccini lovers please note that there are three Puccini homes. He was born in the one in Lucca, they have top memorabilia, but he actually left home when he was little more than twenty years old. He never lived there as an adult as due to a scandal with the women that eventually became his wife they could not live in Lucca together. The second and more important home is the villa at Torre del Lago, near Viareggio, that was his favorite retreat. After his death a storage room was converted into a chapel and he is buried there; on the opposite side of the wall there is the upright piano on which he composed. This is a very magical place to visit as the drawing room that doubled as his composition study room was left the way he liked when he lived there. You can feel him as being still present, he could come back in a few minutes. The third Puccini home is in Viareggio, it is in a serious state of disrepair and can be visited only on special occasions.

My husband and I are doing nearly the same thing, but Vernazza to Florence. When we leave Vernazza, we are going to blitz the Field of Miracles in a couple hours, and then go onto Lucca for a quick overnight (the only 1 night stand we are having this trip). We’ll be there with enough time to stroll or bike the wall, enjoy a good meal and relax before the intensity of Florence. Maybe climb the Guinigi tower and explore Lucca on foot the next morning before finishing the trek to Florence.

That’s our plan anyway. 😁