Monaco and Livorno

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Cruise day 3 - Monte Carlo.

(Geoff) Day 3 sees us pull up at Monaco (Monte Carlo) around about noon. Only problem was there was a cruise ship already pulled up at the dock (very small marina) and we had to wait till it left and made space available for us to dock. In the meantime, the crew manned the lifeboats (literally) and provided a tender service into Monte Carlo. We had not booked anything so we watched as lots of people left the ship and traversed the washing machine before getting into the harbour and heading to shore. We were happy to stay on board until the ship docked!! The other cruise ship left at about 3 pm and we proceeded to reverse park up to the dock.....pretty spectacular really when you consider the ship is nearly 350 metres long! It all went off very smoothly and we were able to go ashore at about 4.00 pm. We had nothing organised so spent a while wandering the shoreline and having a look at the old palace and the gardens and paths leading back to the dock. We had no interest in going to “Casino Royale” so had a bit of R&R. Ship leaves at 11.00 pm for Livorno (near Florence).

Cruise Day 4 - Livorno (Florence)

(Geoff) We will be returning to Florence after the cruise ends so Sue has booked us into a tour that is off at the coast. We are up at the crack of dawn (6.00 am) and off on the tour at 7.00 am - pretty early now that we have adjusted to the time differences. The tour is called “Le Cinque Terre” - roughly translated this means the 5 lands/towns. It is incredible to see the towns built up on the nearly vertical slopes from the seaside to the hilltops but even more incredible are the terraces that allow agriculture to happen all the way to the top - olives and vineyards mainly. These terraces date back over 1000 years ago (yes that's 800 years before Captain Cook) and are now under the management of the National Parks. We spent a few hours wandering from town to town and followed the “path of love” between Manarola and Riomaggiore. This path followed the coast line and gave us great views out to sea - pretty rough this day so not much traffic on the seas.

We then caught a train to Vernazza, the major town out of the 5 and had some free time exploring the town. Had a lunch here where we tried the local fare and enjoyed it very much. Finally time was up and we caught the train to La Spezia and then the bus back to Livorno.

We were pleased to see the ship and now we head to Civitavecchia, Rome's port for a later start on Tuesday for our next tour.

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