Highlights Cruise Day 4-Livorno (Florence, sort of)
I missed the sunrise during harbor entry again (a time zone problem, the sun was doing just fine). Livorno is a working port, but it looked great in the light just after sunrise. Later not so much (morning “golden hour” can only do so much for rubbish and mountains of dirt—who uses dirt in a harbor?). There’s nothing historic in Livorno because it was flattened in WW2. To commune with historic architecture, I took the bus tour to Pisa. Tower still leaning, check. I did some studious praying in the Cathedral. The boundary with the Cathedral is monitored to prevent sneaking across (praying only gets you so far in Italy).
Notable Items
The cruise model, which Viking merely adopts, is “different port every day, part of the day spent there, overnight sail to the next.” Being a sailor, I know what ports are like. They used to be very seedy (I can say no more). Now they ride the jagged edge between tacky and quaint. This is true everywhere in the world, probably. The tours of the port area close to the ship and further by bus are just a slice of the country.
I understand the model and embraced it for this trip. I’m generally not interested in souvenirs and don’t have luggage space for them whether I’m in a city for three hours or three days. On the ship, you spend a week or more in nice accommodations with high-quality food, entertainment, and service. I was “all in” on the cruise travel model for this trip.
The historic area of Pisa, Piazza dei Miracoli (“Square of Miracles”), is separated from the town by a high wall, which, with the throngs of visitors, gives it a theme park vibe (no roller coasters). I never clarified what the miracles part of the name means. Did they happen or was the square named in expectation that they would come later?
Like the Barcelona Icons tour, we spent an hour walking around outside the buildings receiving interesting narration on our whisper boxes. All of them required tickets (of course) and all of them were built with recycled Roman building materials. You could see Latin letters and phrases sprinkled over the outside, some upside down.
At the end of the external building tour, we were released from the guide with the obligatory warnings about public restrooms (there aren’t any, a significant departure from theme parks), pickpockets, and gypsy girls. I don’t know how much trouble a gypsy girl could cause in an outdoor Italian architectural theme park (or how I would recognize them), but I was on my guard.
Entry for the Pisa Cathedral, the Pisa Baptistry, the Monumental Cemetery, and the tower that doesn’t know the meaning of the word “vertical” is timed. It has to be, or they would be like Tokyo trains during rush hour: ushers would have to push you inside. The Leaning Tower (there! I said it) was a bell tower with swinging bells back in the day. The bells are struck electromagnetically, no swinging allowed. Architects put the kibosh (as my mom used to say) on large changes in momentum from heavy swinging bells at the top of a tower that’s already leaning. Go figure.
I got a free, timed ticket for the cathedral, but the entry time was thirty minutes _after_ we needed to meet the guide to return to the bus. Uh oh. Time for problem-solving mode.
Under the assumption that actual prayer would be free, I found a side-entrance to the cathedral. It didn’t say “Free Side Entrance Here,” but I saw the door opening a tiny bit and people darting inside in small numbers. Ha! I gave that a try. It seemed like the right thing to do at the door was to ask the door ushers if I could enter to pray. Boy was that a bad plan! Apparently, I asked too loudly (I wasn’t even inside the chapel). The two door ushers (how many people does it take to open a small door?) were visibly irritated. They roughly motioned for me to be quiet, much more aggressively than the simple index finger to pursed lips. Why? I looked over their shoulders and saw that Mass was in progress. Ralph morphs into Rude American, but how was I to know?
I slunk (it’s not slinked) to a pew in the chapel, took some deep breaths (the aggressive gesticulating I just received was unnerving), and prayed. The service ended while I was slinking. Spiritually restored, I glanced around the chapel. These were furtive glances to be sure. I think I was on probation with the ushers after the entry incident. The chapel was part of, but roped off from, the main cathedral. I briefly considered the idea of resuming my slinking to cross the velvet ropes into the main chapel, but rubbished the idea when I saw another monitor.
Post prayer, I rejoined the tour group at Il Turista restaurant and gift shop for the snaking, follow-the-leader trek back to the bus. There was some serious straggling on the way — this despite the raised Viking paddle waved around by our guide like she was signaling an airplane on final approach to an aircraft carrier. To be more charitable, I think people were distracted by the trinkets on display under tents along the exit route. I ignored the vendors and stuck close to the guide, but just a little back, so I didn’t get hit by the paddle.
Back on the ship without paddle bruises, I noted public toilets that had water lapping sounds (I prefer 80s Rock myself). I kept looking for a hole in the hull! At supper, a person was clearing my table in the Restaurant (Which restaurant? — don’t start that again) and asked, “What, no latte tonight?” Now that’s attention to detail.