We woke up bright and early our first day on the boat as we arrived in the port of Livorno. After breakfast on the ship, we boarded a bus for Pisa to check out the Leaning Tower. Our tour guide was pretty entertaining saying she was from Livorno and they didn’t understand why the people of Pisa were so proud of their leaning tower and thought that tourists should be more impressed with towers that stayed upright!

The tower was a very cool sight though. We snapped some pictures pretending to hold it up and tip it over. It was a beautiful, sunny morning so after looking at the Tower, we walked around the grounds and also checked out the Church and Baptismal around it.

Naturally, we stopped for some gelato before hopping back on our bus for Florence. Florence is a very cool city. It is a walled city so it grew up instead of out, which was really reflected in architecture. It’s a very tall and skinny city. Before we got started touring we grabbed pizza and a sandwich for lunch at  the Burger Beer Club. It was a good little spot and the pizza was not surprisingly, delicious.

We saw the Ponte Vecchio Bridge, which is a cool stone arch bridge with shops built right on top of it. It was also the only one that survived WWII intact.

From there we walked to the Piazza Signoria where we saw the replica of David, Neptune’s Fountain and many other statues by the Uffizi Gallery.

We continued on our way to the Cathedral and Baptistry Duomo, which were really impressive. It was built with beautiful red and green marble. The design was also incredibly intricate – as intricate as anything we saw in the Vatican.

We walked back to Santa Croce Square where we started and wandered through the tents selling food, beer and souvenirs and checked out some  leather stores before catching up with our bus back to port.

Florence was a cool walkable city with interesting architecture, history and delicious food. This is another one I would certainly recommend!