The cruise ship docked into the port, Livorno, as the sun was rising.   Livorno is about 30 minutes from Pisa and about 90 minutes from Florence.  Personally, when I visited Florence in 2005, I did not think it was that interesting of a place.  So, we joined a half day tour that only visited Pisa.

Hubby and I joined the rest of our tour group #11 in the theater and then disembarked the ship to the motor coach.  We spent the whole time in the Piazza dei Miracoli, where the main buildings are the Battistero, Duomo, and Torre Pendente.  There was a local guide who provided us with information and stories about the square for about an hour and then the rest of the time we were free to explore on our own.

Piazza dei Miracoli, “Square of Miracles”

Battistero, “Baptistry”

Duomo, “Cathedral”

Torre Pendente, “Leaning Tower”

During our free time, we attempted to take a picture of ourselves and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I say attempted because after about 50 tries, we still do not have a decent picture.  We even had several strangers attempt to help us, but most of the photos show the top of the tower cut off, crowds of people, or just did not look good.  So, the picture below is the best that we have.

Of course, we also had to do the pushing of the tower pictures.  These were a bit easier to do.

Funny side story:  There were two couples, probably in their 60s, who saw me taking the picture above of Hubby, and they wanted to do the same thing.  But instead of just one at a time, all four of them wanted to do it together.  On top of that difficulty, they had an older camera where the screen was less than an inch big.  Hubby took the camera duties and I was in charge of positioning their bodies and hands into the right places.  Hopefully their picture turned out well.

So back to the events at hand, we decided to take a “family” photo in the square.  This also took several attempts, but I think the “child” was a good sport and did not squirm or fuss.

After the half day tour, we had lunch aboard the ship and just lounged around the ship until dinner time.

chicken skewer

sirloin steak

chicken and shrimp curry

napoleon

The nightly theater show was Colorz performed by the NCL production cast.  Each segment, from the costumes, to the lights, and even to the lyrics of the songs, revolved around a specific color .  The best part of the night was the chocoholic buffet.  Everything was made from chocolate…the desserts and the displays.  It was absolutely beautiful and yummy.  When we went back to our room, we found a towel elephant (previous nights included a dog, a snake and some other animal we could not figure out).  The towel elephant and the “child” were instantly friends.

Livorno was the last port in Italy.  From there, the ship sailed on to Cannes, France.  Stay tuned for Day 8 and the last sightseeing day of our honeymoon.