Sunday, September 29, 2013, At Sea between Livorno and Civitavecchi (For Rome)

During the night we had a lot of thunder and lightning.  Even though it was stormy and raining the sea wasn't rough.  We were still in bed when we got to Livorno at 7 AM.  It wasn't light but the vibration and sounds of the ship changed.  When I looked out at 8, it was obvious that it had rained quite heavily.

We ordered coffee and juice in our room and lounged around while drinking them.  Most of the tours to Pisa and  Florence had left by 9, I could see the buses from our balcony.  The weather alternated between just cloudy and cloudy and raining.  Sometimes it rained quite heavily.

We went to the Horizon Court for lunch. After we had lunch we returned to the room.  The weather had cleared some and I was able to get a GPS position, the closest cache was 2.5 miles away.  I had centered my search on Pisa and Florence, not the port at Livorno.  I searched for 500 caches centered on those two cities, not realizing they were so far away.

There was a shuttle to town and back for 5 Euros.  The weather had cleared quite a bit so I took the shuttle into town hoping to get close enough to walk to a cache.  Even though the drive was about 20-30 minutes, it wound around quite a bit and really wasn't that far as the crow flies.  It was still 1.65 miles from the nearest cache.  I only had two hours until the last shuttle back to the ship.  I wasn't certain I could walk over 3 miles round trip, let alone do it in under two hours.  I walked around the block surrounding the square and took some photos.  It occurred to me that the European towns we have seen so far are very much like older Midwestern American cities.  The architecture is different but the towns are similar in that there are a few streets surrounded by a variety of buildings from the same period and the changes are away from the town centers.

Back at the ship I met Gerri and we went for an earlier dinner than usual at a pizzeria, Alfredo's, on board.  I had a Calzone and Gerri had a plate that was similar to Ravioli, but by a different name.  The meal was very good and the service was great.  Through the ever changing clouds we saw a beautiful rainbow.  We went to dinner early for two reasons; we knew Lou and Mona would be late after their tour in the rain to Florence and we planned to go to a game show in the Princess Live TV Studio.  The game show was Celebrity Liars.  The celebrities were the Cruise Director Sam, the Deputy Cruise Director Dan and the comedian we had seen the first night, Troy.  The audience had to select which of the celebrities was telling the truth about the meanings of five words that were presented.  It was funny but we only got two correct, the words were obscure to say the least and most of the definitions given had some sort of funny pronunciation or a meaning as equally obscure as the word..

After the show we had ice cream cones and listened to the piano player in Crooner's Lounge.