Initially we took the motorway and then I got a thought into my head - we still had enough time on our hands to get to the hotel so why not get off the motorway and take a few back roads to Livorno so that we could see some of the beautiful hilly landscape a bit more. Paul was quite agreeable to the suggestion but perhaps regretted it. The roads were very narrow at times, and very windy too. At one point the road going down into a gorge valley was blocked by barriers so Paul had to reverse all the way back up the hill until he could find a driveway on which he could turn around on. As we reversed up the hill 2 vehicles (one being a van) were coming down and overtook us slowly, wondering what the heck we were doing. We managed to stop them and explain, and mime, that the road was closed further down. Needless to say they continued on down but eventually we saw the one vehicle heading back up behind us - the driving realising we were right. He tooted and waved at us as he passed us. The van? We hoped the driver managed to turn around somehow! We managed to find an alternative route on the other side of the gorge.
Pisa is on the way to Livorno so Paul felt it would be a good idea for me to see the leaning tower of Pisa as I had never been there before. Looking at the time, I was quite reluctant to see the tower. I had a feeling there would be crowds of people let alone perhaps a long wait to go up the tower and that it would probably be best to go very early one morning. Anyway I relented and we managed to find parking at a stadium outside the walled city. When we arrived at the area of the tower - there was a queue of people waiting to get in and one had to purchase a ticket from a ticket office - which was not at the tower. We had a wander around the area and around the cathedral (currently undergoing restoration) and grounds. The museums required a ticket to go in which we could obtain at the ticket office. We popped in at the ticket office - to find out that we would have to wait over 1¼ hours to go up the tower. We decided not to wait - it was already 5:30pm and we still had to go to our hotel in Livorno. Hopefully, when we have a bit more time, we will go back to Pisa and also visit Rome and Venice. But that is for another holiday.
We found the hotel (Max Hotel, Livorno) and checked in. The hotel restaurant would only open at around 7:30pm but we were hungry so we went to the adjoining shopping mall. Well, it was supposed to be a shopping mall but it wasn't. It was a strange building with about 3 shops, a hairdresser and a cafe selling snacks. We didn't really have a good feeling about the 'shopping mall' so got into the car and drove around searching for somewhere to eat. We delayed eating when we saw Intersport and decided to take a quick peek inside to see if they had any swimming flippers/fins in our sizes. Success at last, and they weren't too expensive either. There was a shopping mall close to Intersport so we tried our luck with regard to finding a bite to eat. There was a food court with a few places to eat so we ended up at a place selling pizzas. We ended up having a pizza but felt a bit rushed because the place was closing - we were the only ones left having a meal.
We managed to find our way back to the hotel with the use of the satnav's instructions but a delay in voice speech led us to us missing a turn-off so we had to carry on the road that we were on until the satnav found an alternative route back to the hotel.
I've just realised we didn't take any photographs during our journey except for when we were in Pisa! Oooppss...
Tomorrow morning we have to be up early to catch the ferry so early night for us. Yawn.
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| Our tracked route across Italy from Venice Mare to Livorno |
PHOTOGRAPHS
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