An overnight trip to Liverno, Italy

AHH!! This is so nice. The beautiful Royal Caribbean Brilliance of the Seas will carry us from France to Italy. A good dinner and wonderful night’s sleep as we let someone else do the driving. Morning comes and we have landed in Livorno. There are many choices of places to visit here, so the group are off on their own. Florence, Pisa, the wine country and Cinque Terre are all within reach of a one day tour.

Livorno being the port it is easy to catch a train to most anyplace. Because of our time constraints, we are all taking tours of the various places. This way we know we will be back to the ship before she sails. Also, the most important thing is that someone will tell us the history as we go along. So, off we go.

Florence is a Renaissance museum with art, statues including David,cathedrals and many galleries. If time permits, shopping is everywhere. Don't forget your gelato.

Not far away and usually included in tours is Pisa. Even when you go to other places, Pisa is easily seen from the highway. Seems like it sits in a field in the middle of nowhere. The story of its building is fascinating.

Some of our group wanted out of town into the wine country. Such beautiful scenery as they visited wineries and had a wonderful lunch. For myself and my friend, Anita, we headed for the Cinque Terre. This had been our dream for many years to see these 5 villages stuck to the sides of the hills above the beautiful sea. And what adventure that turned out to be. Because you cannot drive between these towns, your other options are the train and ferry. The seas were rough that day, so the ferry wasn’t running. The crowd on the train was the most horrible event. The ride between 2 of the towns took 4 minutes, but it took an hour to stuff all the people into the cars. When the doors opened, they literally fell out!!

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