Day 5--Pisa & Florence, Italy

Day 5 was our first day in Italy and the only day we were taking a planned excursion the ship offered. We were going to do "Pisa & Florence On Your Own!" This consisted of transportation to Pisa and then Florence with a guide offering various information in between. In each town, we would have "free time" to wander and sight see as we wanted. This was a perfect way for us to get to two cities that we otherwise would have had a hard time visiting, and still having the freedom to see what we wanted.

Patricia was our guide. She was from the port city, Livorno and was so knowledgeable and most importantly easy to understand. We really enjoyed learning all the history and little known facts she shared on our way! We definitely enjoyed the excursion, but hated being herded around like kindergartners following a guide holding a sign. I think it said we were Tour #13, but it might have well said "Excuse me, ignorant Americans coming!" It was a little humiliating!

Our first stop was Pisa. Originally we thought we would spend our entire day on this stop in Pisa. We were very thankful we were talked out of that. Although the leaning tower was cool to see, it was about all Pisa had to offer! In fact, we quickly realized that if the tower had been built correctly and did not lean, no one would ever visit Pisa! There was also a beautiful cathedral and baptistry in Pisa, but every town in Italy seemed to have those three things--a baptistry, cathedral and bell tower. We can say the leaning tower LEANS! It leans a lot more than you realize, but is not as big as you would think. It made for fun pictures nonetheless!













The drive from Pisa to Florence was about an hour and a half long. Patricia offered tons of information for the drive, but the Tuscany countryside was more than we could have asked for! David, who loves the movie Under the Tuscan Sun was thrilled to see the scenery he fell in love with in the movie. It was exactly the same, with vineyards and olive trees as far as you could see. The buildings were so colorful and it was all like a beautiful painting. We definitely felt like we were in Italy.

Florence was amazing. It had so much culture, history and art. Open air museums featuring sculptures by Michelangelo and others were as common as the gelato (Italian ice cream)! Although we didn't want to wait in line to see the original "David" statue, we did see a very similar replica along with street after street of Italian bistros, cathedrals, and museums. Leather and gold are the "items to buy" in Florence, and both certainly were plentiful. One of our favorite sights was Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence and the only one that survived WW2. It was full of shops of gold and people! The scenery was beautiful. In Florence, we enjoyed our first REAL Italian meal--I had cannelloni and David had brick oven pizza. YUMMY!

We really enjoyed our first day in Italy and it left us so excited to see Rome the next day. We would both definitely go back to Florence some day--you could spend a week there!