Livorno and road trips to Lucca and Pisa

Ciao Bellas,

After all the beauty of the Cinque Terre, we eventually made our way to our next port, Livorno. After the wonderful berth at Mirabello, Livorno was industrial, rough and mainly rocky and rolly. Every kind of ferry and cruise ship comes into Livorno, aka Leghorn, as well as fishermen and small boat pleasure craft. The marina staff were very nice but this would be a marina to miss, next time.

Livorno wasn’t without its excitement, shortly after we berthed another yacht came in without an engine. The neighboring yachts had crew trying to toss lines across but the exhausted owner was having trouble and it’s hard to give instruction or manage your line when you use your hands to make a point. The words and the hands were working triple time and finally …success and they managed to get the yacht in.  The instant replays began on the dock, thanks were given and bonhomie was enjoyed by all involved.

We were lucky, about 11:30 pm the wash stopped and we were able to sleep until about 5:00am the next day. We left and in a very short time landed at the beautiful fairly new Marina Cala de Medici. In a heartbeat, we secured the yacht and walkied 2 kms to the train station and we were on our way to Lucca.

Lucca has seen people of the millenia, Etruscans, Romans, Lombards and is very famous for being enclosed in its medival wall.  There are several beautiful  Piazzas, narrow streets, lovely churches and two towers. We walked the up the 207 stairs of the watch tower, in a very narrow confine  on a very hot day.  You can tell who the view junkies are, they are the ones climbing up these hundreds of stairs.  Luckily for us, not only views but incredible breezes over the town made the trip up the pigeon infested bird tower worthwhile.

Monday we went to the local Coop and provisioned for the next week on Mercier. Then we went back to catch the train into Pisa. The train schedule was different to the one posted online, so we had lunch at Rosignano, a piece of bruschetta each, four euros. Did we mention how cheap food is here?

The trains are mainly airconditioned, mainly on time and very comfortable but trying to work out the schedule seems to be beyond us.   Once in Pisa, we had read about the Red or Rosso bus which will take you to the Tower, Museums, Duomo in Miracolli Piazza. The buildings are beautiful and the area is small and 98.9% of tourists, all taking photos of each other holding the tower up. In groups or with their one finger, but every photo seems to be of the Leaning Tower, oh, except one.  In the Duomo, a lady of a certain age was doing a fully lean on the column tussled hair sexy pose, in the church.

Today we are off to Elba – a Tuscan Island, we’ll talk more then.

Ciao

James and Gaila