Thursday - Livorno

Today we were in Livorno. It was rather gloomy out. Most had taken the 1 ½ - 2 hour trip to Florence. We were fine with staying on the ship and having a relaxing day. We started out with breakfast in our room. I actually just had cereal today, and it tasted great! We spent a while in the library as I tried to just post text, but to no avail. Much to our surprise, I received an instant message saying “Bonjourno” from my Dad. It was only 5:15 am at home, so I immediately became worried, however, he was just fine. He says he now goes to bed when he’s tired and gets up when he wakes. What a new pattern! It was good to “chat” with him for a bit. After some time in the library we decided to grab some lunch. It was still early, but we were a little hungry. We opted for the outside grill where we had a salad and split a burger. We were docked directly across from the sister ship, so we had a bird’s eye view of them loading the various sundries that are needed to run a cruise ship such as this. The really surprising part was that the chef was out there inspecting everything that came in, even as far as cutting a hole in the side of the box to inspect the produce. It was quite the operation. I would not want to get in the way of that fork lift operator! After watching this process for about an hour we went back to our stateroom. We were both so sleepy all of a sudden, and with the cool cloudy day out we decided to take a nap. Well a short nap turned into 2 ½ hours!! We couldn’t believe the time when we woke up and thought we should go and have tea for some caffeine. The ship was quite empty as most went on excursions, so tea was quiet as well. Nonetheless, we enjoyed our afternoon tea. Tea time moves straight into cocktail hour, so we went back to our room. I was a good girl and went up to the gym. It was so great to work out, and they have such a nice facility. I was able to look out and see all that was going on including the red carpet they laid out for the returning passengers, and even the crew had lined up to greet everyone. After showering it was time to eat dinner. We weren’t quite up for the five course dinner in the grand dining room, so we opted for Tapas on the Terrace, the more casual dinner option. Margret, the woman we met the first evening was up there, and she asked us to join her. We had some wonderful sushi – the first we’ve had since we left. We basically just grazed, but had to finish off with gelato. Mom had the tropical fruit sorbet and I had the rum raisin gelato. We left the restaurant to go and listen to the string quartet, but they weren’t playing. There was a special musical performance at 21:45, so we went to that instead. They had a wide array of music and singers that ranged from Van Morrison to Evita, to Mozart. At this point it was getting late, so we retired to our stateroom for the evening. We had our chocolate covered strawberries left over from earlier – that was our bedtime snack. Even with a nap I think I was sound asleep before my head hit the pillow.