04 Feb

Day 5 – La Spezia aka the Road to Pisa or Florence

 

Yay!  Another port!  We debated for a while what to do in La Spezia.  We’d been to Pisa before, but Florence was such a long way.  About a two hour train ride each way?  Also, it was Monday and the museums are closed on Mondays in Florence.

We had more and more people tell us to go to Florence anyway, but 4 hours on a train?  Ugh.  We knew didn’t want to go that far away from the ship on our own, so if we did Florence we were going to take the Disney transfers in.

We kind of left it up to fate and waited until the night before to check on the transfers.  What do you know, they were full!  Well Pisa it is then!

We knew we had plenty of time to get to Pisa and back, not to mention we wanted to avoid the tender mess in the mornings, so we slept in a little.  Stephen went running before we got up.  When I got out of bed, I did the first thing I always do on a cruise.  Go look out the window and see what’s out there!  Today I was quite surprised because when I moved the curtain, I was like 10 feet away from the people on the top deck of the tender.

Ack!

Bedhead! In my pajamas!

Here’s the next one – empty so far!

Stephen brought me a coke every morning after he went running. So sweet! Yes, I drink coke in the morning. Don’t judge. I got dressed and went upstairs to take some pictures.

Here’s our room from the elevator. Right next door! I love being so close.

Here’s the tender from deck 4:

La Spezia:

Deck 4:

We went to Parrot Cay for breakfast this morning. Here’s Stephen waiting for brother-in-law to eat with us:

We ran right into Plamen, our server at Parrot Cay. He was happy to see us and asked us about 50 times what else we needed. Some of the breakfast options:

Here were my breakfast options:

Here was Stephen’s:

No, no, no.

I brought Ally back some bacon and Chase back some cereal so they could sleep a little longer. When I knocked on my parents door, my Dad said my mom woke up not feeling well so they were going to stay onboard. Shoot! That’s no fun! She was fine the night before?

And Wuh oh! I was counting on my dad helping me remember how to get to the train station! It’s okay, I think I could find it.

We boarded our tender right away today, but unfortunately we sat on it for 30 minutes before we left. We sat up top so we could take pictures. Man it was hot in the sun!

We’re finally off!

Look! One of these boats is named Peter Pan!

Here are my directions to the train station in case they help someone one day. I meant to take pictures on the way back, but Ally and I ended up running back to the tender for reasons I will get to later. Here’s the dock:

When you disembark from the tender, you want to take a left and start walking down the street. After you pass a park on the right, take your first right. Then follow that street all the way into town! You pretty much dead end at the train station!

Like I planned it.

Crossing the street:

Walking up through the town towards the train station:

I remember all these stairs from last time! Thankfully we were not going that way:

Here we are entering the train station looking back across the street:

Here’s the station:

We actually bought our tickets at the machine across the way with some help from a security guard: We had about a 30 minute wait. The station had a McDonalds in it, and while we weren’t hungry, you know what McDonalds has right? Free Wi-Fi of course!!

This McDonalds has lots of food options:

We bought some cokes, and okay maybe some French fries, and sat down for a little while.

We walked out to the track about 10 minutes before our train was to arrive. We stood there for a few minutes and noticed a train a lot further down the track. See it way down there?

Looking back the other way:

We thought surely that’s not ours?

Luckily I decided to go check! I walked down and sure enough, it was ours! Everyone else hustled to catch up and we boarded. The train ride was about an hour.

Stephen took a selfie before giving back my camera:

Brother-in-law:

Short nap!

Around this time I started to realize we didn’t have as much time as we thought. Ally had a spa appointment, courtesy of her grandparents, at 3:30. We left the ship at 11, but after waiting for the tender for 30 minutes, tendering for 20 minutes, walking through town, and then waiting on a train, we were actually going to be cutting it a little close!

Oops!

The last time we were in Pisa, it took quite a while to figure out which bus to get on. This time I was prepared.

We bought our 1.5 Euro bus tickets at the newsstand and crossed the street in front of the train station. This is the train station looking back from the bus stand:

The bus stop you want for the tower is right across the street in front of this hotel:

The bus is Lam Rosa. Several passed and my family may have questioned me many times, but I knew this was right! Here’s the schedule:

The Hotel:

And finally it came.

We got off on the Torre stop. You can see the square from the bus, but the stop is called Torre if you ever try it. Here we are getting off:

Goodbye bus!

Well there’s a McDonald’s here too!

There’s the square!

What’s behind those walls? This magnificence!!

Look at these cuties:

As a side note, I dropped Chase off at college this week and I may be overly emotional every time I edit a picture of him. Would it be wrong to put a halo around every picture of him?

There she is!

And now it’s time for “The” picture:

It was packed here! Everyone was taking “the” picture and of course we were no different.

Ally got creative and tried to kick it over without falling off her post. Fail.

We wandered around for 30 minutes or so reading signs and taking pictures.

It’s hard to comprehend from pictures how much the tower truly leans. Here’s the base of it. The top of the wall around the sides is level with the ground. Look at the difference between one side of the wall and the other:

I’m not good at selfies with my own camera. It’s too heavy. That’s my excuse.

There’s a market right next to the square which was fun to walk around in.

We bought some pizza from a stand next to the square. 2 Euros for a personal pizza! Yay!

And my favorite!! Coke Zero! Yay!

Chase snuck off and got some candy from the market to supplement his pizza.

See how many people are taking the picture? Pretty much everyone.

After we had our fill, we walked across the street to catch the bus back.

Ally was starting to stress about missing her appointment and she was stressing me out a little too. It was Africa hot waiting for that bus, so that didn’t help. Cute train:

On the bus:

I wish we had enough time to walk back because there are so many (other) picture opportunities in Pisa!

When we got back to the station we saw the next train was in 5 minutes. Yay!

Here it is!

When you travel by trains and busses in Europe, the tickets you buy aren’t date specific. So you must take the ticket and validate it in a machine after you purchase it. You cannot forget! If you happen to be on a train where the conductor comes by and checks tickets and yours isn’t validated, you pay a hefty fine. Well someone did come by on this trip, and a woman near us hadn’t validated. He wrote her out a ticket right then and there!

We had the car to ourselves most of the time. The scenery was nice:

You could take this train all the way to Rome!

Ally’s tension was growing the entire train trip back. I decided she and I would jump in a cab and ride back to the tenders to save time. We were ready to jump off the second we arrived!

The train stopped at a stop called La Spezia but it sure didn’t look like the same stop we’d boarded on. I couldn’t tell if maybe we were just further down the tracks then where we boarded and we all got off tentatively. We took about 5 steps and I knew this wasn’t our stop. The funny thing was, there were about 40 other Amercians a few cars down doing the same thing. One of them must have asked a conductor because about the same time we realized we needed to get back on, they all turned and started running en masse back to the train. Oops! Silly Americans.

The next stop was ours, and Ally and I jumped off, ran through the train station and to the first cab. He was fast and we were there in about 5 minutes. Here’s the street to the tenders:

The ships still there!

Shoot! We just missed a tender! So we sat. And sat. And sat.

We didn’t leave for about 25 minutes. I was going to be hacked if the boys all made it before we left. Of course they didn’t because they found free Wi-Fi on the way…

I’m pretty sure Ally stared at me like this the entire way:

So…That was fun.

I stood by the door and took pictures for the last 10 minutes. Partly to take pictures and partly to be positioned strategically next to the door so we would be the first off!

We ran up 10 flights of stairs and into the spa about 20 minutes late! Okay, I lied. We ran to the elevator and went up 10 decks and went into the spa about 20 minutes late!

The spa said it was no problem and they took Ally back. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and went to the room to get ready for dinner. From my window, I saw the next tender come in and I figured the guys were on it. They were!! There’s my boy!

My boy who no longer lives with me! My boy who Is having so much fun he doesn’t call his mom every day! Oops, sorry. I digress…

I checked in on Mom. She still didn’t feel great and wasn’t coming to dinner. Sadness. She wasn’t sick to her stomach, just chills and maybe a fever so she didn’t plan on going to see the doctor onboard. She was quarantining herself and trying to avoid being under forced quarantine!

Dinner was in Parrot Cay that night. My in-laws were about 45 minutes late. Their excursion went super long. Plamen and Meisa didn’t mind.

There were a lot of late people!

I ordered this:

And this:

Chase branched out from pizza tonight with – Chicken fingers!

Dessert time!

Old favorite:

I checked in once more with Dad and told him what time we were leaving for Rome the next day. I was worried about doing that without him and I said I really hoped he could go if Mom couldn’t. I hated for him to miss so much too!

I probably shouldn’t have because Mom wasn’t up to it and Dad came without her. I think he felt bad and worried about her all day. Sorry Dad!

When we got in our room we realized our bathroom floor had flooded. It seemed to be coming up from the floor. Just water. We called maintenance and they came pretty quick. This was waiting for us:

Then we went to bed! Big day tomorrow!

 

Our 19-Day Mediterranean Adventure – Greece, Turkey and the Search for Free Wifi

Day 0 – Crazy Days Before Departure! 
Day 1 – On Our Way! 
Day 2 – London Layover 
Day 3 – Embarkation!  
Day 4 – The Beauty That is Monaco 
Day 5 – La Spezia aka the Road to Pisa or Florence 
Day 6 – Rome Baby!
Day 7 – Sea Day Fun! 
Day 8 – Introducing The Pneumonia 
Day 9 – Athens and the Inside of the Hospital Onboard!
Day 10 – Turkey 
Day 11 – Mykonos and the Start of a Countdown to Get Back to Mykonos 
Day 12 – Sea Day and Palo Dinner 
Day 13 – Segways in Malta! 
Day 14 – Last Day Onboard 
Day 15 – Disembark and Barcelona 
Day 16 – Travel to London
Day 17 – London Baby! 
Day 18 – Harry Potter Heaven