The seas were quite rough last night as we traveled from Toulon to Livorno, the winds were blowing around 50 knots according to the ship’s weather on the cabin TV, with gusts even higher. Luckily, since we were sleeping, or at least trying to sleep, it was not as bad as being up and trying to walk around.
Port of Livorno
We arrived on time in the port city of Livorno, and were off of the ship soon after the scheduled 7:00 AM arrival time. We met up with two other couples while waiting for the gangway to be put into place, and they were trying to find some additional people for sharing the taxi ride to the main train station in Livorno, which is too far from the ship to walk to. The fare is Euro 25.00 for from two to eight persons, so it was nice to be able to split the cost more ways than just the two of us. We actually spent the rest of the day with one of the couples, they were about our age, maybe a little younger, and were from Los Angeles. They had remained on the cruise from the original voyage from Venice to Barcelona, and since they had just done this same port of call a few days earlier on that cruise, they knew exactly how to get to the train station from the ship.
Since Stephanie and I were going to Pisa, they asked to go along since we knew how to get there via train from our prior visits. On their previous stop in Livorno, they had gone to Florence, and now wanted to see Pisa on their second time around in Livorno. We purchased our train tickets for the round trip to the Pisa San Rossoro Station, which is a short 5 minute walk to the Leaning Tower. Since it was Sunday, and the train schedules are more limited, it took longer to get to the San Rossoro station than we had experienced in the past. We ended up having about a 45 minute “layover” in the Pisa Centrale Station before we could get a connecting train to the San Rossoro Station. We could have walked to the tower from Pisa Centrale, but it takes about 30 minutes to cover the distance, plus, since we did not have a map and were afraid of getting lost, we just waited for the next train and made the long 4 minute train journey instead.
Leaning Tower and Cathedral
Once we arrived at the Pisa San Rossoro Station, the walk to the Piazza del Duomo, where the Cathedral and Leaning Tower are located, was easy, and was just as we had seen using Google Street View during our pre-trip research. It was a cold and windy morning, but at least the sun was shining. We arrived in the Piazza del Duomo about 8:40 AM, and took a few pictures before heading over to the Cathedral for Sunday Mass. Our new friends, Julio and Elena were also Catholic, so they went to Mass with us.
After Mass, Julio and Elena decided to also joins us for our 11:40 AM trip up to the top of the Leaning Tower. Luckily, it was still early, and the crowds had not yet arrived, so they easily purchased their tickets for that same time slot. Since there were no crowds, we realized that we had not needed to purchase our tickets ahead of time, but it is always safer to have them just in case. Stephanie and I had been worried that the cruise ship tours might have gotten a lot of the tickets since our 11:40 AM ticket time was the first time slot available online when we had purchased our tickets a couple of weeks ago. We took some more pictures as we waited for our designated time slot for the Tower climb.
Leaning Tower of Pisa
At 11:40 AM, we entered the bottom of the tower for a short explanation about the construction of the tower, and the resulting “lean”, and how it had been somewhat straightened during the original construction. The initial 4 stories were constructed first, then the lean started, and it sat for about 100 years before the last 3 levels were added. Some compensation for the initial lean was built into those last three levels. The Tower leaned about 5.5 degrees before some adjustments were made over the last 10 years to stabilize the tower at 5 degrees of lean.
We climbed the 260 steps to the level that is not considered the “top”, which is not as high as we had gone 5 years ago when we had last climbed the tower. We had actually gone to the very top level, and had hoped to go there again, since the lean of the tower is a lot more evident looking across the very top. It was a little disappointing, but still was nice to finally see the tower without any exterior scaffolding.
View From The Top – Well Almost The Top
Of course, the same could not be said for the cathedral, and some of the other surrounding buildings, which were now covered with scaffolding instead.
After climbing the tower, we headed over to some of the street vendors to look at their wares and then headed over to the nearby grocery store, which we were surprised to see open on a Sunday. We picked up some supplies, as did our traveling companions, and then headed back to the area around the leaning tower so we could find the street we had initially taken to arrive at the Piazza del Duomo, now for our walk back to the Pisa San Rossoro train station.
Climbing Down The Leaning Tower
Again, we had to wait on the connecting train to Pisa Centrale Station, and then waited once again there for the train back to Livorno. Twenty minutes after boarding at the Pisa Centrale Station, we arrived back at the Livorno train station, and ran into the other couple we had shared the taxi ride with to the station earlier this morning. They had gone to Florence today and were now looking for other passengers to split the return to port taxi ride cost with. This time we were able to get a group of eight assembled to share the taxi, which is the maximum for the taxi van size, and we headed back to the port.
Once back on board the ship, we went to the buffet for a very late lunch. We went back into the port terminal building, which was located right next to where the ship was berthed, to use their free WiFi, but after we got inside the building, we discovered the WiFi was not operating. We had wanted to add some photos to the blog using free minutes, but were not able to do so.
We headed back to the room and relaxed a little while enjoying some Sangria we had bought in Barcelona. We decided to head out to the hot tub around 5:00 PM to enjoy a nice hot soaking before the ship departed at 7:00 PM. We wanted to be finished at the hot tub before the wind picked from the ship’s movement.
We had checked the dining room menu earlier, and once again had not seen any meals that peaked our interest enough to go through the effort of getting dressed for that longer duration dining experience. Since the ship was in ports the last two days, and was not departing until 7:00 PM tonight, we do not believe the menus for the dining room have been filled with really nice choices for meals since many of the tours were not ending prior to the scheduled time for the early seating. People certainly did not want to “miss out” on any special meals due to port duration times. This was evident as we went to the buffet, it was open on both sides of the ship, and was quite crowded. Obviously, many other passengers had our same plan, go to the buffet instead of the dining room after a long day in port, or had already missed their 5:15 PM early seating dining time.
After dinner, we went to one of the bars to listen to some jazz music, and enjoy a glass of wine, mainly for the purpose of acquiring a set of wine glasses for the room for use when drinking our private stock during the cruise. After several songs, we decided to leave. The music was so calming it was starting to put us both to sleep. We headed over to the atrium, and listened to the same guitar player from last night, he was really good, and the music was a little more lively, keeping us awake.
We headed back to the cabin and worked on pictures and the blog before retiring for the night at about 11:00 PM. It had been a long day, and tomorrow would be the same, another 7:00 AM port stop, where we will be taking a early train into Rome for the day.
To view more photos from today’s post, here is a link to the Photo Album for Livorno, or you can access it via the menu on the top right.