Travel with Dale & Margaret

Livorno, Italy – Afternoon

After going to Pisa this morning I have just checked on Margaret, grabbed a quick lunch at La Veranda and hurried (not ran…Margaret doesn’t allow me to do that) down the ramp and jumped on the shuttle that runs very 30 minutes to town.  It dropped us off right on the town square which was pretty interesting.  Livorno, being on the coast, was bombed during WWII so many of the building are new and rather mundane.  Not ugly, mind you, but just not how you pictured this part of the world.  The good news is that many of the old walls and building remain…enough to make the old-town an interesting walk-a-bout.

One thing that I had no idea of is that the town was originally very similar to Venice.  Like Pisa, there were canals instead of streets.  But, unlike Pisa, where the river changed coarse and all the canals were eliminated and turned to roads, because Livorno is on the coast, many of the canals remain to this day.  It adds some charm to the city for sure although it is no match for Venice.

I walked around town taking a few pictures and watching the locals hanging out on floating cafes on the canals, sipping on espressos on street-side cafes and then went to the 24 hour pharmacy (I give up, Word keeps replacing farmacia) to get the cough medicine.  Unlike the US, they sell strong pharmaceuticals without prescription and the pharmacist actually gives you advice on what to get.  “What kind of cough?  Dry or with mucous”, etc.  He handed me the strong stuff for a dry cough (I guessed), I handed him 8 Euro and was on my way back to catch the next shuttle.

Of course, I found out from Margaret that she didn’t think she had a dry cough but I knew that it would still help her sleep.  And, it turned out to be the case although the drug in it made her have some strange dreams.  Better that than no sleep at all I figure.

Back on the ship Margaret was up and feeling well enough to go out to dinner at Signature’s.  Although we didn’t get Maria but a tall, very young French man (boy?) that was from a town nearby to Maria’s, we still had a very nice meal.  His English was almost non-existent and Maria had spoiled us with her perfect French-accented English.  We made an early night of it and drifted off to sleep hoping that Margaret would be well enough to go on our 4 hour bus ride in the morning to a nearby lake and some wine tasting.

Livorno, Italy – Morning

Today we are in Livorno, Italy. There were lots of options for tours including Florence and Pisa. We had been to Florence a couple times so we chose Pisa. But, our Italian captain had said that Livorno was also a great place to explore so, after our morning tour I decided to do just that.

Margaret woke up still having a cough and just not feeling well so I will go out by myself. Breakfast at La Veranda and then off to the theater to exchange the tour ticket, off the ship and to the bus. Our tour guide was named Lara and, although her mike was going on and off we managed to use the wireless headset units even on the bus in order to hear her. The bus ride was a bit over 30 minutes and had little of interest other than a bunch of fishing boats in the harbor, a smelly oil refinery on the outskirts of the port and a 7 mile long military base. So much for being in Italy. You drive past the Miracle Square area where the tower is, then back track a bit and park the bus in a big lot. Then, you walk about 10 minutes through a circuitous path until you start seeing black guys pushing their wares on you.

They are illegal sellers and we were told that you could be fined 500 Euros for buying from them. I really doubt that this would happen since there were about 100 of these guys around all over town and you’d think they would just arrest all these guys if they wanted to really stop it. We picked up a new local tour guide, which I found odd since our first tour guide was also local and both knew all the stories but it really didn’t matter.

We walked past rows of street vendors all selling the same sort of trinkets, purses, Pinocchio’s puppets and the like. Pinocchio’s story originated in this area. Another 10 minute or less walk brought us to the gate to the Piazza del Duomo, renamed Miracle Square, since the 20^th century, because at one point a famous artist that I had never heard of said that the square was so beautiful that it was a “miracle” the first time he saw it. Voila! It was immortalized by changing the name. Not much of a story really but that’s what they told us.

That being said, it really is beautiful when you enter the newly minted Piazza dei Miracoli (Square of Miracles) via the big entry gate through the very tall midievil walls that surround the plaza. While the bell tower of the Cathedral, known as “the leaning Tower of Pisa”, is the most famous image of the city, the dome-shaped Baptistry, the Cathdral, and Campo Santo (the monumental cemetery). The medieval complex includes the above-mentioned four sacred buildings, the hospital and few palaces.

We first heard stories about how the bell tower was constructed. After building just two stories it listed to the south by at first a meter due to it having an inadequate foundation and being built on ground that was softer on one side than the other. This area previously was marshy land and, in fact, there originally were canals similar to Venice instead of roads through the surrounding buildings, thereby explaining why the streets are curved instead of a straight grid. Unsurprisingly, it is up for debate about who the original architect was and no one put their name on the structure as was the practice at the time.

Because the Republic of Pisa was in almost constant battles with cities in the area (like Genoa and Florence) among other groups, the project was delayed almost a century, allowing the ground to settle a bit. It would have otherwise fallen over. A new architect took over and decided to compensate for the tilt by making one side of each floor taller than the other, making the actual building curved! The original project was started in 1173 and they had only gotten to the seventh floor by 1319 and topped off with the bell tower in 1372, 200 years after the original project was started.

Modern projects have been undertaken to strengthen the tower and they have also cleaned it up. Looked pretty good to me. The lean looks very different from different sides. All of the buildings are made from white Carrera marble from the quarry nearby and from marble taken from other sites which is the explanation for the different colors on the cathedral.  When Pisa captured an enemy’s territory they found that they used very dark colored marble.  So, they substituted some columns with this darker marble just to let everyone know not to mess with them…sort of.  One in particular (see picture) was a very dark violet color and it really stood out.  The level of detail in the carving reminded me a lot of what we saw at the Taj Mahal.  Someone was definitely trying to show off!

We went into the cathedral which was having services on Sunday and then into the Baptistry where we were able to hear three people singing long, mellow, complementary notes which demonstrated the amazing echoes due to the huge dome. Sounded great!

We also walked around in the city and were told about Knight’s Square on which the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa is located. Basically, a college for really smart people (or, as the name says, at least smarter than normal people) founded by Napoleon, many of whom have become famous scientists, politicians and Nobel prize winners. The buildings had fantastic facades including busts of famous people. Reminded me a bit of the kinds of things we found in Florence on an earlier trip.

I had lunch near Miracle Square and walked to the meeting point from which we walked back to the bus. All in all an enjoyable day and at least a minor bucket list item had been checked off.  The bus took us back to the ship and I went immediately to the room to see how Margaret was doing.  She wasn’t doing too badly but I decided that this would be a good place to go to a farmacia and get her some strong cough medicine to help her sleep.  The next post covers my exploration of old-town Livorno.

After a fun morning exploring all the in-town morning activities going on around Anitibes and just plain enjoying the sights in this beautiful city I arrived at the tender area to meet up with my tour group. Turned out that they ended up being about 30 minutes late but eventually all the people in Tour #15 gathered together and, with our tour guide Jane, walked about 10 minutes to the bus. Another beautiful, clean window bus with a good-looking, young driver.

Off we went to the north along the coast, on the road between the beach and the railroad tracks. Along the way, there were a few topless women on the smooth large gravel carpeted beach where cars parked right on next to the beach. The beach was pretty sparsely populated while in another few weeks it apparently would be completely packed with people without a parking spot in sight.  Still, colorful umbrellas dotted the shoreline and casino clubs were just starting to park cars for their best, most anxious customers.

We passed a hotel designed by a famous designer that looked like sails and that caused the local planning board to change the design rules to be lower and more sedate. Finally, we turned inland and headed into the foothills towards St. Paul Vence. A few turns later we saw the walled city up in the hills. A classic medieval city, built by a wealthy king trying to ward off the Protestant catholic Spaniards who were trying to pick up some nice beach front property.

After departing the bus Jane continued to give us some color on the local area right up until we saw where Chagal was buried in the cemetery just outside the city’s walls. He was Jewish so there were rocks on top of the crypt of him, his wife and her brother. Something to do with Jews believing that rocks would help them achieve the afterlife or something like that.

I continued to take pictures of doorways, windows and other such stuff that would make Scott (the designer of our Carmel house) happy, had a coffee in what my brother Wayne would call a “hole in the wall” coffee shop, then headed to outside the city walls to have a coffee at the café where you could watch the older guys playing boules. It was great fun but before you knew it “our time was up” and I headed back to the bus for the ride back to the tender dock.

I sat on top of the tender, having a good time with all the folks up there, and, in general, all the people on this tour were quite fun, we finally made our way back to the Mariner on a beautiful evening in Antibes.

A few more interesting things about Antibes. It is one of the largest pleasure harbors in Europe and there are plenty of huge yachts. Russian oligarchs and middle-eastern rich guys (among other places) have their mega yachts in that harbor and those same guys have bid up the price of beach-front properties just outside the harbor to crazy prices, like $60-$100 million, trying to out-do each other.  The most popular spot is the cape, a peninsula at the north end of town that is called Cap d’Antibes.  They said that one oligarch paid something like $400 million for a place making it the most expensive house in the world.  If I’m not mistaken I think that same guy bought the place we’ll discuss in Monte Carlo for about the same amount.  He’s a very close friend, actually more like a son, to Putin.

Back in the room, Margaret was feeling better but not up to snuff. I went to the Observation Lounge to get two Pink Flowers. That worked so well I went up to get two more. Met a guy from San Francisco named Michael that had lost his wife (not on the ship…she had passed away a year ago) and told our bartender, Mahaela, that she made perfect Pink Flowers from the freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.We ended up getting our gluten-free dinners in our room and they were OK. Made better by having our sliding glass door open on a beautiful night on the ocean with a semi-warm breeze blowing.  Accompanied by some Penfolds 2008 Cabernet-Syrah.

When Margaret woke up on this dazzlingly bright blue sky morning with the typical haze on the horizon she was still feeling under the weather. We didn’t have a tour assigned so I went down to the Destination Services counter on Deck 5 at 6:30 am to see if anything was available and to get a latte and some fruit for me and tea for Margaret. The trip was a success as the latte was excellent and the desk said that they had tickets available for the St. Paul De Vence 4 hour afternoon tour. I took one ticket, making sure that they had another ticket available should Margaret wake up raring to go. In the meantime, I worked on the blog posts from the past couple days in the abandoned coffee shop with me being the only one there. Yesterday it was packed. Must have been a good night last night!

I brought Margaret an Earl Gray tea with honey to the room but she had already ordered and eaten breakfast so the tea wasn’t necessary. That being said, she clearly wasn’t in shape to head out so, after double checking that Destination Services had another ticket available should she change her mind, I headed out to explore the old town Antibes and, if she changed her mind, meet her at the on-shore tender dock for the tour at 1:00 pm.

Antibes (in France they say AhnTeeb but you don’t get scoffed at if you say Antibee) is a Mediterranean resort in the Alpes-Maritimes department of southeastern France, on the Côte d’Azur between Cannes and Nice.  It was founded 5^th century BC by Phoceaeans from what is now Marseille. The strange name was based on Antipolis which meant “city across” in Greek because it was across the sea from the main Greek city at the time. Seems to me that pretty much all cities were across the sea but I didn’t have a say and we’re stuck with the modern version at this point.

It was common in these coastal cities for traders like the Greeks to settle the area and then have trouble with invaders over the years. They then would invite the Romans to come in to provide protection and also do some trading. The Romans also brought grapes and olive trees and started producing wine and olive oil which has remained a mainstay to this day. At some point the Romans just made these places part of their empire and things were good.

However, like many places here they went through several cycles of doing well and doing poorly after the Romans fell and it really wasn’t until King Louis XI of France in the late 15^th century that stability returned and in the mid-1800’s it became quite popular as wealthy people from Europe discovered it as a resort town.

The old town area was very much alive on a Saturday morning at 8:30. There was a covered marketplace pavilion with produce, olives, meat and fish crowded with locals scooping up there favorite items. It was a colorful, vibrant place with great smells the spoke of fresh, local and fantastic foods that would make great meals later that day. I made a couple passes to get some pictures of the food and people trying not to be totally obnoxious.

Getting to the end of the pavilion I turned towards the water and walked through narrow passageways to the coast where there was a road that led northeast on a great roadway that was built above rocky out cliffs that reminded me of Carmel. I went until I saw that there was no other way to get back into the city and went towards the central tower along the coast. Turned out that this was the Picasso Museum, one of the most interesting buildings in town. Picasso is closely associated with this area because he came to town in 1946 and was allowed to stay in the Château Grimaldi where he painted, drew and did ceramics and tapestries. When he left he gave a number of his works to the city and the castle later became the Picasso Museum! But, for me it was a bit of a let down because the museum wasn’t open yet.  I walked around through town finding an antique flea market, a clothing flea market and lots of people out enjoying a beautiful Saturday morning. Lots going on and all interesting, including dogs here and there being well behaved.

With an hour to go before the tour started I found a café called The Crème Brulet and sat down for a moulle meal. I tasted one of their Rose’s and Sancerre’s and selected the Sancerre. The moulles came and it was about 100 small’ish mussels with a ton of potatoes grilled in olive oil. Later, they brought some really fresh (non-gluten free) bread. How could they do that! We are 100% gluten free, well, except for the Carmel Le Bicyclette pizza once in a while gluten free.  OK, guilty as charged. But, it’s frickin’ real, in the flesh, Cote d’Azure! And, I only ate half of the potatoes and only a couple pieces of the incredible bread soaked in the white wine broth.  Enough blame.  I finished the mussels and wine, ordered a latte, drank it all, paid the bill and headed back to the Regent tender waiting area. What a beautiful city and what a fun time I had exploring this city.

Go to the next post to see what happened on the afternoon bus tour in Antibes.

St. Tropez, Afternoon

St.  Tropez is a lovely city once you get off the horseshoe walk around the port which has many artists showing their paintings right on the waterfront and a number of family commercial shops and restaurants on the other side of the cobblestone road.  It is behind all that where St. Tropez really shines with very nice shops (clothing, antiques, art galleries) and restaurants with patio seating.  The food looked incredible with most having moulles, sardines and calimari that looked lovely.  I resisted since I was going to have dinner on the ship although I did stop by what looked like a trendy waterfront cafe and had a cappuccino.

What I haven’t said yet is that each of the hilltop villages required walking up fairly steep hills so I figured that I’d continue that by walking to the highest point in the city to the citadel.  After going the wrong way and having to walk around the entire hilltop redoubt I snuck in the back entrance to the castle at the top.

There was an incredible museum that was built into the tower area.  They took you on a circuitous route through at least 3 stories and it was very, very well done with multi-media exhibits about the history of the area, including famous battles and shipwrecks.  I didn’t have time to really take it all in as it was already 5:00 pm but what I did take in was the incredible panoramic views of the coastline from high above the city.  You could really see the azure color of Azure Coast from there.

Back on the ship Margaret was still in bed and not feeling well.  We had been given a Prime 7 steakhouse reservation for that night but I went down and cancelled it.  We were given a time for the Rome day with a sharing table (not Margaret’s cup of tea) but we’ll figure it out at the time.  I picked up a Compass Rose menu and we ordered from that menu and had a nice dinner in the room.  After watching a Johnny Dep movie (that was very strange) we made it an early evening, hoping that Margaret would be back on her feet tomorrow morning.