While La Spezia is the cruise port for both Florence and Pisa, we decided to stick with an afternoon excursion to Pisa after 3 straight days of very long excursions. I would definitely recommend this to anyone taking a 10-night cruise. On the 11-night, you would have a day at sea to recover from the first four ports, but on the 10-night, its seven straight ports. So make your own morning at sea. I woke up around 10, and we all went down to Parrot Cay to grab breakfast. The ship was a bit busier then the past few mornings, it looked like some other people were following our plan. Also during breakfast, we noticed the ship start to sail away from La Spezia. The wind had been gusting pretty bad, so it looked like the Captain was moving farther out to avoid hitting anything.
After breakfast we went to the room to get ready to go ashore. Around 12 we noticed that a tender was loading at the forward tender lobby, so we ran downstairs to be told that the tender had left, even though we could still see it sitting there tied up. So they sent us to the aft tender lobby saying that one was pulling up. When we got to the aft lobby, the tender was just pulling away, so we were once again sent to the front. Fortunately the people working aft offered to call forward and make sure they held the tender for us. Finally we made it forward and boarded the tender. As we were waiting for the tender to finish loading, the rain and wind really picked up. It began raining so hard that we could no longer see La Spezia, we could only see the ship. All of a sudden, we heard people shouting and saw the crew running around. The tender had ripped away from the ship in a gust of wind. Half of a family was on the ship, and half was on the tender. They were not able to safely tie up to the ship, so they had to head in to La Spezia. The ship had been moved pretty far out in the harbor, so we had a 20 minute ride in.
We finally arrived ashore, to discover that there were absolutely no port facilities at all. There was a floating dock with a tent, and the Disney security tent. If you have ever lived through a hurricane, imagine that amount of rain, and that is what we were getting. We only had our little Barcelona umbrellas, so we hid under the Disney trent trying to wait out the rain. The rain began to slow, so we decided to head out in search of an internet cafe. We first made it to the bathrooms, the only port facilities they had, and then ran across the street to the tourism office to try and find an internet cafe. Of course, there was not an internet cafe within walking distance. We headed back into the rain to discover that it was pouring again. There were no buildings around, and the guy in the tourism office didn't seem to want us hanging out in there, so we made a mad dash back for the Disney tent. By the time we made it back, our pants, sleeves, and shoes were soaking wet. It was getting close to time for our excursion, and we were really starting to not want to go on the excursion since we were soaking wet, and figured that it was probably raining in Pisa.
Mom was worried about getting sick again from the rain, and Dad and I were miserably wet, so we all got back on a tender to the ship. In the end, Mom convinced us to go so we hopped off the tender and got on the bus, where they handed out ponchos to everyone. Why they couldn't have done this on the ship, I will never know. Dad and I did our best to dry our sweatshirts on the bus, while taking the 90 minute drive out to Pisa. Pisa is in Tuscany, and it was cool seeing the traditional tuscan farm houses and countryside. We had the most annoying guide in the world. She had the microphone turned up all the way and was shouting into it, several passengers were even covering their ears. There was a baby who kept crying every time she spoke, but she would just keep shouting "Oh, no! The baby is crying, why are you crying baby?" And the baby would cry even more. It was actually pretty funny.
We arrived in Pisa and took a 15 minute walk from the tourist bus parking, past the rows and rows of vendors, to Miracle Square, where we got our first glimpse of the tower. An amazing thing about Pisa is that it is just a tiny farm town. If it weren't for an engineering mistake, no one would ever have heard of it. The tower is really awesome though. There is a giant cathedral next to the tower (the tower was supposed to be the belltower for the cathedral), and our excursion included a tour of the cathedral and a half hour of free time. We didn't really want to listen to our guide anymore (and it was still raining), so we decided to meet up with our guide at 4:15, by the gates, the meeting point after the free time. We let Marianna, the Disney escort, know we were heading off and then spent some time taking pictures pushing over and holding up the tower.
We needed to use the bathroom, so instead of paying to use the public bathroom, we bought food and drinks and McDonalds, enjoyed being out of the rain for a moment, and used the free wifi. This McDonalds actually posed the greatest communication problem of our trip. We just could not get the lady taking our order to understand what we wanted. The problem, I figured out, was that we were trying to order by number, and apparently Italian's don't order by number. We almost ended up with three burgers and four McChicken's. We were finally able to get on the same page, and got our food. After eating, we still had about 20 minutes left, so we took another stroll around Miracle Square. It had stopped raining, so we grabbed some pictures with our ponchos off. The group met up and we headed back for the bus. It is amazing how many times people will try to sell you an umbrella even though you are carrying one. You gotta love Italy.
Our guide told us that she was going to let us sleep on the way back to the pier, but she kept talking the whole time. Oh well. We arrived back at the pier around 6, fortunately it had stopped raining in La Spezia. Dad and I were lucky enough to be sitting right by the door where they tied up to the ship, so we were the first ones off the tender. We headed upstairs to see Mom, and then Mom and I headed down to the Walt Disney Theatre for Heath Hyche's main-stage show at 6:45. We saw Heath on what was his first cruise with DCL, and absolutely loved him. His show tonight didn't disappoint. There was an Indiana Jones tribute that was one of the funniest things I have seen onboard, but I won't spoil it.
After the show I got ready for dinner and then went to the promenade lounge to work on blog posts. Since it was Pirate Night, there were a lot of pirate activities going on and the ship was just buzzing. I have never seen the atrium and lounges that full. I love the Europe crowd, they come onboard ready to party. I spent about half an hour talking with Hilda in the atrium before heading to Parrot Cay for dinner. We were really lucky with our dining rotation, Lumiere's on formal night and Parrot Cay on pirate night. Once again, I was the first one to the dining room from our table. Summer asked how I always beat everyone to dinner and I responded: "because I'm that good, and because I'm that hungry :)."
We had a delicious dinner, the mahi-mahi was awesome, and joined Summer and Igor for the Pirate limbo around the dining room. After dinner, we headed upstairs to catch the end of the pirate party and watch the fireworks. After the show I grabbed some delicious crepes and then headed downstairs to watch Krazy Karaoke with my friends. Surprisingly, almost everyone who sang was really good, it was definitely the best Karaoke i had seen onboard. Around midnight I headed to bed, since we had another all day excursion coming up.
Up Next: Villefranche, France (Nice and Monaco)
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