This day we decided to relax and take it easy after the stress of the Rome ordeal. We docked in Livorno, Italy, and had the option of visiting Pisa and/or Florence. We decided to pick just one and went to Pisa by bus. It is a little town surrounded by a wall that looks like it belongs around a medieval castle.

Entrance to Pisa

As soon as you glance past the entrance you can see the leaning tower, a cathedral and a dome side-by-side, it looks like a postcard!

Pisa postcard

We went to buy tickets to climb the tower but they sell ridiculously quickly and the next available time was 1500 (our bus left at 1510, so we would never make it back in time if we bought them). We just looked at the tower from the outside instead and bought a ticket to go into the other buildings and museums. We had enough time to enter the cathedral which was amazing, the dome – which had an awesome echo effect demonstrated by a staff member every hour,

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and the museo dell’opera del duomo (a museum documenting the entire production of the dome). We had enough time then to calmly make our way back to Livorno where we found a tiny little pizzeria that seemed to be closed, but whose owner welcomed us warmly and served us like we were queens. The pizza was incredible…delicious and fresh, we also tried some yummy homemade wine and were treated to limoncello shots by the owner and his wife after we had finished eating.

Our wonderful pizzas

We went back to the ship (and arrived early!)

We made it back early!

where we were able to relax and watch an impressive ice-skating show,

Cruise ship ice-skating show

eat a wonderful dinner, and party like we’ve done every night for the past few nights!

See all articles by Deborah Zinn.