Today we docked in Livorno. We had a private tour with Driver in Rome. In fact, all of our tours in Italy are with this company.
Our driver/guide met us promptly at 8:00 am this morning. When he introduced himself (his name was Michael), Craig asked him where he was from and he immediately said Italy. He didn’t have an Italian accent. I immediately thought New York but didn’t say anything. When Craig pressed him further it seems that his Mom was from New York and came to Italy when she was 22 fell in love and got married. She knew no Italian and Michael said she had difficulty learning it. Along came Michael and his sister. Michael said that his Mom started teaching him English beginning at 6 months old. He is fluent in English (with a New York accent) and Italian. He has relatives in the US so comes back frequently to visit. He has dual citizenship and hopes to pass that on to his soon to be born child if it is possible.
We had a lot of fun on our tour. While driving to Pisa we passed by a pretty good sized US Military Base. The name of it was Darby Military Base. When we arrived at Pisa, Pat and Terry climbed to the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It took them a little less than 30 minutes to climb up, take pictures and come back down. They said that the stairs at the top were narrow and winding. While they were climbing, Craig and I visited the restroom where we had to pay 50 cents (euros) each for one visit. We then walked around and looked at the outside of the beautiful buildings there.
From Pisa it was on to Florence. We saw some beautiful views on the way and when we arrived. I thought it was very crowded there but Michael said that he had seen it worse. Luckily the tour company had permits to drive us up close to the sites so that we didn’t have to walk a long way to get to them and he was able to wait for us nearby.
We had lunch in a little sidewalk cafe. The food was quick and good. It did get kind of windy while we were eating and was blowing things around. When we finished lunch we drove to the Accademia Gallery, Europe's first school of drawing founded in mid 16th century and visit several masterpieces including Michelangelo's statue of David. We could have spent hours in there because there was so much to see. It would have been nice to have a private guide in there as well or at least have the headphones and do a self guided tour.
By this time we were getting tired and asked him if we could go on back to the ship. There were a couple of other things that he wanted to show us so we just drove by and didn’t get out of the van. Of course we did have time to stop for gelatto. The name of the place was La Carraia and he said it was one of the best places around for gelatto.
We were supposed to have been back to the ship at 5:00pm and we got back around 4:40pm so we didn’t cut much out. When back on the ship we went straight to the Neptune Lounge for a snack. After all we weren’t going to be able to eat dinner until 5:45pm. That was another hour we would have to wait!
After dinner we went to the show. The entertainer was Leanne Mitchell. She was the winner of BBC1 The Voice in 2012. She really put on a good show.
When we got back to the room to get ready for bed, I realized that our cabin steward did not leave us a card to fill out for room service breakfast. It was 10:00pm and he was already off duty and the Neptune Lounge was closed. It took forever to get the front desk to answer their phone and then it took 2 calls to them to get the to finally bring us the form. Once we got that and filled it out, it was time to go to bed for the night.
Tomorrow we will be visiting Rome.
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