Cruise Day 8: La Spezia

Teaser only here Today we landed in La Spezia, Italy, about an hour away from Pisa, or a little farther for Florence. We've been to Florence a couple times, but never to Pisa so we decided to head there and go up the tower. We had actually made this plan soon after booking the cruise so we'd gone ahead and bought train tickets and made a reservation for the 12:40 ascent up the tower. There's no where for the cruise ship to dock, so we have to tender to the port, which means taking small ferries between ship and shore. We knew that tendering could lead to a delay in getting ashore, so we purchased tickets on the 10:00 train and planned to get on the earliest tendering ferry that we could.
May 22, 2010

Today we landed in La Spezia, Italy, about an hour away from Pisa, or a little farther for Florence. We've been to Florence a couple times, but never to Pisa so we decided to head there and go up the tower. We had actually made this plan soon after booking the cruise so we'd gone ahead and bought train tickets and made a reservation for the 12:40 ascent up the tower. There's no where for the cruise ship to dock, so we have to tender to the port, which means taking small ferries between ship and shore. We knew that tendering could lead to a delay in getting ashore, so we purchased tickets on the 10:00 train and planned to get on the earliest tendering ferry that we could.

I had planned for us to save time by having room service deliver our breakfast. We have door hangers with little checkboxes for the breakfast items you'd like, and we filled that out when we returned to our room after dancing last night at 1:30 am. The order form says you have to hang it up by 3:00 am, so I assumed we were okay, but in the morning the breakfast never arrived, and then I noticed that our order form was still hanging on our doorknob - it had never been taken. So we had to rush up to the buffet instead to get some cereal and apples for later, and then we assembled at the proper place to queue for the ferry.

The tendering process was much faster than we'd anticipated and we were off in the first boat. We got to shore and walked up to the train station. Aylish and Eric (some of our dining mates) went with us to the station and bought tickets for the 9:00 train. Our tickets were for a 10:00 train, but we weren't permitted to switch them to the earlier departure. So we spent an hour writing blog entries (we carried a laptop ashore with us) and then took the 10:00 train as scheduled.

The train ride was 50 minutes, and then we were in Pisa. From the station, we still needed to walk about 25 minutes to get to the central plaza where the tower and other monumental buildings are. As we approached, we knew the leaning tower would appear any moment, but even with this anticipation, it still managed to surprise me with just how tilted over it is. I tried taking several photographs and noticed this: photos don't convey the reality of the lean that well. When I look at the tower, it looks impressively slanted, but in the photo, it looks upright, or just tipped a bit. I don't know if it has to do with the curve of the camera lens, or if it needs to be seen in 3D, or what, but no photograph I took, no matter how contrived to enhance the lean looked as unreal as the lean of the actual tower. I wonder if a movie can do a better job than a still photo, but I didn't shoot any film. We were a little early for our appointment and so we exchanged our reservation printout for the tower tickets and then explored a bit. As I mentioned, there are several other buildings in the plaza, and though they aren't as tall so the effect is less noticeable, it looks like they are slumping into the ground, too. We took some photos of this and that, and dropped our laptop bag off in the luggage lockers and then lined up to ascend the tower.

Pisa, from Cruise 2010 - Ports

Someone else counted the number of stairs to the top; I didn't. I'm sure that information is available on the web. Anyhow, there were many steps to the top. Since the tower leans, the staircases lean, too. As we walked around and around up the spiral stairs of unevenly worn marble with big scoops eroded from their middles, we were tipped this way and that, around and around, and the uneven footing, the slant of the tower and the dim, narrow stairwells went well with our sea legs. We felt drunk and woozy and I think climbing the tower after several days at sea is now our recommendation.

On top of the tower is a bell platform where the leaning of the tower is evident in the way the bells hang. In order to ring properly, the bells must have their clappers centered and vertical, which means they have to be adjusted and repositioned as the tower leans over. There were great views of the plaza and the city from here, but there's still one higher rim atop the tower to which we can climb, so we did. The view gets even better from here, but there are fewer visual reminders of the lean, so I think we preferred the bell platform best. It's amusing to me that all the metal railings around the top of the tower are not in the original design. Even with these guard rails, some people were sitting and scooting around from place to place, because without the railings there is nothing but stairs down to the edge of the tower and then a steep drop.

Top of the leaning tower, from Cruise 2010 - Ports

The tickets are issued to limit the number of people on the tower at any time (25 tickets are granted for each 20 minute interval) and we'd stayed up the tower for nearly 40 minutes by now, so we headed back down and went to view the cathedral for an extra 2€. The most impressive thing about this cathedral is the plethora of master paintings along the walls, which we were happy to gape at. There's also an enormous curved mosaic in the alcove behind the altar. I don't remember which painter was said to have done most of this work, but it's impressive. Along the side of the pew area of the cathedral is an elaborate podium. There's one of these in most or all Catholic cathedrals but I don't know its name. Anyhow, the one here is pretty ornate with many small details. It took the sculptor ten years to complete.

From Cruise 2010 - Ports

We had hoped to have time to sample some Tuscan lunch while we were here, but there wasn't time for that any more, since our return train was at 15:00. Fortunately, we did have time to stop at a chocolate shop and liked their gelato flavors, too. So we got rhum babas and gelati (Ryan tried to mix gusto caffe and mango - good flavors on their own but quite challenging to pair. I took the safer combination of strawberry balsamic panna cotta and a very delicious sesamo). Unfortunately for us and our rhum babas, we ordered them to go and so they were not freshly drizzled (soaked!) in rum like the ones we had in Barcelona, which are the second best we've ever had to those in Paris. Still, they were tasty enough and would contribute to a regret later in the day (I'll get to that).

Now it's time to return to La Spezia, but our 15:00 train has been delayed 20 minutes and so the slow train (that we can't take without abandoning our pre-paid tickets) will probably arrive first, despite leaving a couple minutes after 3. At 3:20, our train still hasn't arrived and now the schedule says it's a 30 minute delay. At 3:30, chaos reigned.

At 3:30, a train arrived in bin 4, which was what we expected. Expectedly, a whole bunch of people boarded the train, including a frazzled family of parents and children in strollers with luggage tags bearing the initials BCN. If their bags had been checked to Barcelona, we figured that they must be on our cruise (or some cruise) and therefore heading to La Spezia with us. Just as we prepared to board the train in bin 4, there was an announcement which we couldn't hear well, and the sign moved our expected train to bin 3, where there was currently no train. This confusion made us hesitate, and then we also noticed that the train we had been preparing to board didn't look like the right company (we were waiting for a Eurostar train), so then we had to figure out whether and how to warn the frazzled family before they went the wrong direction and became stranded, never to see the cruise ship again. I hurried up the steps and stuck my head into the cabin while keeping my arm and leg outside the train, in the hopes that I'd have enough warning to jump off should the train before I got caught in the same fate. I managed to get everyone heading to La Spezia off the train (just for that car) and then the sign switched again, saying bin 4. Now we all hovered in the limbo between expectation and misdirection. The frazzled little girl began to cry because she wanted to get on the train. The frazzled mother tore her hair and fretted. An Englishman went this way and that, and the announcer said something in Italian. Finally, we all agreed that this was the wrong train and headed to bin 3 to wait for the proper train. One came 10 minutes later and at last we were all boarded and heading in the right direction.

We picked up a cheap bottle of Tuscan Chianti on the way back to the ship and some spumante muscato. We got back early enough to take a nap and visit the rainforest room in the spa (in case this hasn't been explained yet, the rainforest area has a couple steam rooms with hot steam and several beds of heated rock tile. Soothing music mixes with the tinkle of water from the fountain and it's a nice place to relax or try to kill a chest cold, which is what Ryan got in Sevilla and I've been trying to avoid.) After recuperating, we finished preparing our costumes for the night.

Each day on the ship there is some theme. Today's theme was Pirates! Ryan and I had hustled out before the cruise to the thrift shop in Barcelona and bought items which could be turned into costumes and now, back aboard the Magic, we donned pirate rags and adjusted our eye patches, and headed up to dinner. A good number of other people were wearing costumes - either hand made like ours or ones of Disney merchandise like Jack Sparrow dreds or Cap'n Hook regalia. Children, especially, were in outlandish pirate garb, but some adults were dressed in high theme, too. All the staff had special uniforms with a pirate theme, and at our dinner tables we all received flimsy headscarves with pirate designs on them. Anyone without a costume could wear this to fit better with the festive spirit and soon most people had on something piratey and the place was filled with "aarghs" and "yo-ho-hos."

From Cruise 2010 - On the boat

For supper, we had some conch chowder and crab cakes and a macadamia nut crusted mahi-mahi for the main course. It wasn't as good as what you'd find in Hawai`i (of course), but I liked it still. We also ordered one of the specialty dinner cocktails which had sparkling white wine, Malibu rum and apple schnapps in it. Dessert was a terribly disappointing rum baba. We'd had a choice of rum babas or ice cream sundays with rum raisin ice cream and a rum caramel sauce. I thought I'd prefer the ice cream, but I'd had gelato already and didn't want to break the rule for this option, so I risked the rum baba and regretted it, especially since I'd had a much better one already today. The problem with the cruise rum baba was that there was no rum in it, only regular sugar syrup. Alas!

After dinner there was a pirate party on deck, and a huge buffet had been laid out, including a vast array of desserts. Now I really wish I hadn't had the inferior rumless baba, but I was too full to touch the after dinner buffet. I suppose people who ate at the earlier seating were hungry enough to go again, especially since I saw numerous people strutting about with massive turkey thighs wielded like clubs, from which they were taking immense, messy bites. The party included a cast member-led group dance and then some Disney pirates made an appearance only to be defeated by Captain Mickey, who rode down on a zip line. Then there were brilliant fireworks, which are not normally allowed on ships because of their resemblance to distress signals, but which the Disney ships are permitted somehow.

Pirate party, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

Mickey ziplines in, from Cruise 2010 - On the boat

We attended the adult karaoke (it only means no children, not raunchy or racy) but I started to fall asleep because I was so tired [it was Wind Beneath my Wings that did us in --Ryan]. We heard a handful of numbers and then slipped off to bed. Good night!