Livorno and beyond

Greetings from Livorno, Italy. We have just left the port and are now on our way to Civitavecchia, Italy which is the port stop for Rome. Today was very hot and sunny. A true Italian summer day. The port of Livorno is a busy commercial port with high security so we had to take a bus from the ship into the town and another bus from the town square to the railroad station, which was quite far away. Then we took a train to Pisa Centrale where we change to the local train for the city of Lucca. Everyone else went to Florence. Since we have been to Florence we chose not to go but to find a smaller city with not so many tourists. That we did with Lucca. There is a Roman wall around the entire city which is very well preserved and has a walking path on the top. We walked around part of the wall, walked around the center of the city, had the obligatory gelato in the town square while sitting on a bench under the shade of a big old tree. Just like the locals. The town is lovely and peaceful and not loaded with tourists. On the other hand, my sister and her husband went to Florence and they said it was crawling with wall-to-wall tourists. I think we made the right choice. So, to get back to the ship we again had to take two trains and three buses once again. So, it was a grand total of six buses and four trains for our outing today. I must admit that I still love the European trains.
Tomorrow should be interesting. They just informed us that there is a transportation strike in Rome and the Pope is hosting some major event at the Vatican! Should be interesting.