CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Bye bye Florence, Hello Pisa and Livorno

Flo­rence
Flo­rence, our beau­ti­ful new friend — we love you, Ciao bella! We will try to return! Thank you for a beau­ti­ful time!

We had a per­sonal tour of the city, went to see the David (which is just awe­some, really) — and vis­ited a lot of build­ings and stuff about the city. Hav­ing a guide makes all the dif­fer­ence — our guide, “Ludi”, was so knowl­edge­able, shared all sorts of inter­est­ing his­tory with us — and gen­er­ally was just a great per­son to show us around.

After our tour, we hung around the hotel, rested — did a lit­tle more shop­ping, then on Mon­day we headed out of town towards Pisa and even­tu­ally Livorno (where the ferry to Sar­dinia leaves).

Insert more Ital­ian high­way here — noth­ing to report — basi­cally sim­plis­tic, just fast — no big whoop.

Pisa Sucks
Yeah — that’s about it. It’s a one-trick town — and it’s just encrusted with tacky tourism, creepy African guys sell­ing fake watches right by the park­ing lots (gee, I feel safe leav­ing all our lug­gage, thanks) — and crowds of peo­ple stand­ing around with their hands up to take the char­ac­ter­is­tic pic­ture hold­ing the tower up (like these):

[INSERT PICS of PISA]

Kinda missed this first one — I’ll fix it in Photoshop

I’m very, very tall.

Angie is very, very tall.

This is a very good one — the giant Angie holds up the tower while all the lit­tle peo­ple line up to walk into her pocket.

Nate was of two minds about the whole thing — but will likely enjoy this picture

Here, he is lined up quite well.

Finally, I was fed up with the whole thing, so I pulled it down… there seems to be a small Faye Wrey type per­son to my left try­ing to calm me as I do so… (rrraaaarghhh!)

So once we saw that — we left. The whole place was crowded and yucky — there’s a McDonald’s about 100 yards from us. Blech.

Livorno
Ok. So you’re a city that has a pri­mary port for going to points beyond (kinda like Seat­tle) — here’s a good idea … close off the cen­ter of town to auto traf­fic — oh wait — put all the hotels in the cen­ter of town… hmmm… what else can we do? Oh — I know … let’s take down all the street signs… oh, if only there were some­thing else we could fig­ure out to do … hmmm… oh, make half the streets one way. Wel­come to Livorno — we don’t want you here.

Kathy got a Google Maps set of instruc­tions from the free­way to our hotel. Since the streets have no names — the direc­tions lasted all of “Step 1 — at the round­about, take the sec­ond turn onto Via Aquadutto 300m” … what Via? What round­about? Where are we? Hello?

That was majorly frus­trat­ing — but finally we found a place to stop … Kathy got out and asked direc­tions from a lady (well, I sort of said, “YOU get out and fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing…”) … and they chat­ted for a while while the lady told her how to get to the hotel using her hands (I guess she did speak English).

So Kathy came back with hand-written notes that were about 10 steps long.

We headed off … took a turn at the third traf­fic light — took our sec­ond right (did she mean after the two do-not-enter streets?), took another turn, did a thing here, then a thing there — hey look … we’re back where Kathy got out. Let’s try again.

Mean­while — every once in a while, we’d see signs for “Max Hotel ****” … after a few of those — we decided we’d give the good ol’ Max a try.

We fol­lowed those signs, and found the Max — which looked pretty nice — were we look­ing down the bar­rel of another lost fee to a hotel we’d never see? Well, this time, I got out — chat­ted with the lady at the desk — and she ended up giv­ing me a map with direc­tions on how to get to our hotel (the “Tour­ing Hotel” (insert geek joke here about this entire sit­u­a­tion mak­ing even a machine laugh (shout out to Pat))).

SOooo we headed off with our new map (the orig­i­nal Google direc­tions included no map, strangely) … and off we went, into the brink of the restricted zone, pre­pared to bab­ble in Eng­lish and beg forgiveness.

Well — thank­fully … the city didn’t match the map. So we drove around between the well-marked streets and the unmarked streets and the one-way streets and the Ital­ian traf­fic, and the yelling (oh, that’s me) … and the gen­eral ten­sion … and then we found … more unmarked streets … and weren’t we here before??? and shut up and stop honk­ing at me, you jerk … oh, here’s a gypsy who wants to clean our wind­shield … no thank you … what?!! … no — *@#&&#@ to you too, jerk! Sure I’ll get out of the — oh, the light’s green … ok … let’s keep going … where are we? Does the map have this street? Can’t stop here … wait, there’s a sign for OUR HOTEL! Fol­low it … there’s another sign! Yay … wait… there are no more signs … we’re lost again … drive around … back here — where are we going, stop turn­ing the map upside down — ok … wait … I think we’re here… yes, we’re here — there’s the hotel.

Wel­come to Livorno.

On review, the hotel itself is nice. It’s a three-star, which makes it your stan­dard Res­i­dence Inn or some­thing — not too fancy, not too ugly … just right. Trav­el­ing in 3s is fine … 2s, not so much … 1s … well… yick. But I digress.

So, we got all the bags out of the car — Kathy and the kids hoofed them up the tiny tiny ele­va­tor (yes, it’s another tiny tiny ele­va­tor, but oth­er­wise nice hotel) … and we headed to din­ner. We stopped at the Trat­to­ria sug­gested by the desk guy … and then all of the sud­den … it was the hippest place in all Italy. I kid you not … we were stand­ing there, big tired Amer­i­cans — Nate was in his Indi­ana Jones t-shirt, Angie was in shorts, we’re all dressed down for dri­ving, I’m wear­ing sneak­ers … and the square filled with all the beau­ti­ful peo­ple in Livorno:

[INSERT LIVORNO PICS]

So, we slinked out of the Trat­to­ria, headed for a pizze­ria, and had a decent meal as a fam­ily watch­ing Brasil kick Chile around the field.

Next stop — early morn­ing ferry trip — 6am … the day begins with the boat, and (by God’s Grace) ends with the spa/resort on Sardinia.

[I’m cur­rently writ­ing this in Livorno — there’s no wifi, so I’ll post later]