In my last post, W1801 – Vatican Mass, I described our visit to the port of Civitavecchia, the port for Rome in Italy, and our long and tiring tour around the Vatican in Rome from there. We then sailed overnight to our penultimate port on this wonderful world cruise, Livorno, which is also on the west coast of Italy.
I had not been to Livorno before, so I went up on deck to see and photograph our approach to the port, and later Carol joined me just as we were entering the port itself.
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Carol and I had chosen a second 10-hour tour in a row – we knew the combination would be very demanding, but at least it was at the end of the cruise, and we didn’t have a tour booked in our final port later in the week. The tour was to visit two iconic cities in Tuscany, Florence and Pisa.
We left the port of Livorno, passing some canals and loads of new cars all parked up in rows, before passing through the green countryside of Tuscany, on our way to our first top, Florence. Including a comfort stop, it took just over an hour and a half to reach there, and on the way our local guide told us about the city, its history, and the buildings we would see there. Leaving the coach we began a walking tour around the historic part of the city, passing first the town hall and then museum where the famous masterpiece David is housed – there were long queues in the street outside waiting to go inside to see it. We would see a replica of the statue later in its original position, meanwhile we were making for the outside of the Cathedral (begun in 1296 and completed structurally in 1436) and its Baptistery (constructed between 1059 and 1128). Both buildings were visually stunning, but part of the Cathedral was covered in scaffolding while cleaning work was being carried out, and it was hard to see the Cathedral properly for all the crowds around it, and because of the way it is hemmed in by the Baptistery and other buildings. Our guide took us to see the east doors of the Baptistery, which were dubbed by Michelangelo as “The Gates of Paradise“. Lorenzo Ghiberti toiled for 27 years to make these doors, which have 10 panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament, and in one of the borders is a small bust of his own head.
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We then continued our guided walk around the historic part of the city, at one point we passed a covered market, where there was a brass boar with a very shiny nose, for it is considered lucky to either rub it, or place a coin in its mouth and let it fall into a slot below.
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Our guided walk continued down to the river to see the Ponte Vecchio, a medieval bridge featuring shops along its length – these were once butchers shops, but are now mostly jewellery shops.
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From there we were led through more piazzas with statues, including the Piazza della Signoria, with its replica of David and also many other fine statues. In the final piazza, close to the Basilica of Santa Croce, our local guide finally left us to have a couple of hours free time.
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For Carol and I the first priority in our free time was lunch, and in Italy for us that meant a nice restaurant for pizza! Suitably replenished, we set off on our own, and headed back down towards the river as I wanted to take more photographs in that area. On the way we spotted a Murano Glass shop – irresistible to us – and on the way into the shop Carol foolishly said that we were only going in to look, not to buy anything. Sure enough a little while later we left the shop with three purchases – two gifts for my lovely, special, and so understanding wife; and a lovely decoration for our Christmas tree. We successfully made our way down to the river, where I took more photographs of and on the bridge, and then we made our way back to meet up with our guide again at the same place we had left her.
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Walking around Florence I took a few photographs of the more quirky things that we saw, as I like to do. In one of them, Pinocchio is the quirky thing, not Carol – on second thoughts…..
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Our guide then led us back to our coach for the drive to our second city of the tour, Pisa, home of course to the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa. On our way out of the city we were taken past the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is set high above the city and would have given us lovely views down onto it, if only we could have stopped and taken a look! Alas the guide said we could not stop as the coach did not have the correct permit. This scenic detour also took us past Villa Cora, the most expensive hotel in Florence where a top suite can cost $1,600 a night, and our local guide told us that Madonna once booked out the entire hotel for herself when she was performing a concert in the area!
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It took around and hour and twenty minutes to drive to Pisa, and as we drove into the city we could see the Leaning Tower in the distance. Like so often these days, we could only park the coach some distance from the sights, and we had a walk of around twenty minutes to reach the area where the Tower is located, including crossing a railway line.
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The Leaning Tower is actually the bell tower to the adjacent Cathedral, and the combination of the Baptistery, the Cathedral and the leaning Bell Tower together made an impressive picture. Both Carol and I were surprised just how much the tower appears to lean over when viewed directly – it looked far more than the 4 degrees that the internet informed us is the actual angle. Even at this small angle the the top of the tower is displaced horizontally 3.9 metres (12 ft 10 in) from the centre. I would have loved to have gone up the tower, but tickets are strictly limited and only available at certain times, and we would not have had time to claim a ticket and get up and down in the limited time we had available. We therefore contented ourselves with a good look around from ground level, before retiring to a cafe for that other great Italian staple – ice cream. Our local guide had told us that ice cream had been invented by an architect in Florence, so actually we got things the wrong way around – we ate pizza in Florence, and ate ice cream (invented in Florence) in Pisa!!!
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Fortunately once we had walked back to our coach it was a much shorter drive back to Livorno and our waiting ship.
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Later that evening we set sail for our final port of call, Málaga in Spain, which we would reach after two days at sea – much needed days when we could rest up after two consecutive long and tiring tours ashore in Italy. Carol and I are not doing a tour in Málaga, we have both been there before, so my final post for this epic cruise will document what we do end up doing there, and a wrap up report on the whole cruise.
Postscript 1
During the sea day after we left Livorno, they held an “An Audience With…” session with three of the senior officers on board, Captain Åge Danielson, Hotel Manager Rico Taubert and Executive Chef Siggi Weich. It was hosted by the Cruise Director, Elliot Taylor. We had expected Elliot just to feed scripted questions to the officers, but instead the entire 45 minute session was for any questions to be posed by the audience members themselves – a commendable exercise.
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The questions asked ranged from the predictable “what is your favourite place to cruise to?” / “what is your favourite food?“, to the bizarre “Is there anyone up on the Bridge steering the ship at night?” One person did ask the Captain about all the work on the foredeck that I have reported on previous blog entries, and yes my guess was correct, it is all preparation for the two RIBs (rigid inflatable boats) which will be coming on board next month. There was a question about how many people prepare all the food in the Kitchens for our meals, and Siggi gave a very detailed and interesting answer about all the different departments and how they rotate the staff around and through them, which took up quite a bit of the time available.
There were two topics which came up which I would like to give my views on, in case anyone from management are still reading this blog.
The first was about the poor quality of the WiFi on board. Both the Captain and the Hotel Manager responded to the question about this, and they acknowledged that the current system is simply not good enough for either the staff or the passengers. My personal view is that anyway, and especially while the system is inadequate, that the pricing model is wrong and unfair, and that when purchased on a “pay as you go” basis, it should be charged by the amount of data actually transferred, not the amount of time connected to the local router, when for much of that time no data transfer might be possible. I also think that each passenger should be given a small amount of data transfer each day for free – enough for them to check their emails and send one or two to keep in contact with their families while they are away – and charging should only start when heavier usage is made (for example writing extensive blogs!). I find it so sad and wrong that for so many passengers the priority on arriving in a new and exciting port is not to explore it, but is to find the nearest internet cafe. Only the other day in Rome, while we were on a scenic tour of the city, the passenger across the aisle from me was concentrating entirely on the tablet in front of him (as there must have been WiFi on the coach) rather than the sights around him – this cannot be right.
The other topic is the loudness of the shows in the Neptune Lounge. I have been complaining for years on my end of cruise questionnaires that the sound is always too loud, especially from the Black Watch Orchestra. My usual comment is that they don’t accompany a singer or other act, the compete with them and often drown them out! I have noted that on Balmoral, Breamar (and possibly Boudicca) an acoustic screen has been placed around the drummer, which has meant that the rest of the band have not needed to be so loud to complete, and this has improved things somewhat, but alas this has not happened on Black Watch – why? The other evening my wife and I went to see the group “Dominic Halpin and the Honey Bees” perform (no Orchestra this time) – and we only lasted one song before we had to leave as it was so, so loud and we were sitting nearly at the back of the theatre. Despite Elliot’s complacent comments that it always sounds fine where he stands, there really is a problem to us sitting in the audience, and from the reaction and applause when the question was asked in the session, I know that my wife and I are very much not alone in this view.
Postscript 2
On a much more positive note I would like to give my thanks and appreciation once again to the stars of this year’s world cruise, the fabulous Black Watch Show Company. The other night they put on a show called “Moving Through the Movies” – this one was a bit different as it was nearly all dancing, and the show had been created and choreographed by the company themselves during the course of this cruise – Elliot told us that they had been busy developing and rehearsing the numbers in all sorts of unlikely places around the ship – where ever and whenever they could find space and time to do so. The results were stunning, and it was especially good to see just how talented Hannah Ford and Luke Suri are at dancing, as well as at the singing they normally blow us away with. I don’t know if Luke’s Mum is still reading these posts – but if so – congratulations – you must be really proud of your son!! Here are a selection of photographs I managed to take in the low light conditions on the night:
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