Mediterranean Day Ten

Day Ten – Florence

Today we had to get up again very early and leave the ship to tender to La Spezia. This is our last day in Italy. I will leave it sadly because it has been a lot of fun. The drive from La Spezia to Florence takes about two hours. We drove through some pretty famous places – Carrera where they get the marble – Collodi – the birthplace of Pinocchio – Pistoia – where they have most of their nurseries and the flowers we passed were magnificent. Then we got to Florence.

The first place we went was the Galleria dell’Academia where you can see the original David. Now it’s in its own building and at least partially restored. That statue is magnificent, unfortunately they no longer let you take photos of it. After David we walked over to the Duomo, the Campanile di Grotto, Dante’s house, the place where Michelangelo lived and died, Ponte Vecchio which is the only originally built bridge in Florence. Then we went to eat some gelato and we got a demonstration about the history of gelato and their product. It was very interesting but even more impressive was the gelato – it was delicious.

Then we went to the square where the government was housed and there was a replica statue of David and some statues of some really grumpy guy named Dante. I can see if he was that grumpy (at least his statue appeared to be so) you can see why he was fixated on hell. So we went to lunch at a restaurant close to the statue location and we had some bruschetta and white bean toast and some local meats – salami and prosciutto and Parma ham – it was totally delicious. Then they gave us some free time and we went to the market at Plaza Santa Croce and I found my new scarf for my traveling hat and a new Florence leather purse. After this, we walked back to the bus for the ride back to the cruise ship.

It was Pirate Night on the ship, and the ship’s crew and many of the guests were in pirate costume. They had a dance party on the deck with the Disney characters, which was taken over by the Disney pirate characters, to be saved by Mickey Mouse, swinging in from the smoke stack. This was followed by fireworks.

After the fireworks, it was off to bed, with tonight’s towel animal being a lobster. We realized after sending the blog that we forgot to tell you what the towel animal was last night, well you are just going to need to wait until we look at the pictures, since neither Tom nor I remember what it was. Tomorrow we’ll be in France.