Day 5 Tuesday 26 June (Livorno)

We had an early start today.  Up at 6am, breakfast at 7am and meet up with our tour guide on the dock at 8am – the pattern will be the same tomorrow and the next day too. 

Today our guide was Riccardo, from Rome in Limo (and no, we weren’t in a limo!)  He was lovely; chatty, informative and relaxed.  We managed to get away by about 07:50, which worked out so well for us as we were one of the first groups to leave the docks, so we got to Pisa when it was still lovely and quiet.  Riccardo pointed out to us that Pisa is more than just a certain leaning tower, he showed us a couple of other buildings and explained to us that it is a university town. 

Then it was off to, in his words, “that most famous Italian mistake” – the leaning tower. We got into our tai chi poses and took the required photos. 

Tai-chi over, we wandered around looking at the touristy shops.  I bargained for a hat and a bag – came a bit short with the bag as I asked the price, he told me it was 15 Euros, I said  no that was too expensive and began wandering off, he dropped the price by two Euros, I said no still too much and wandered off a bit more, he dropped the price by three Euros to a price that I was actually willing to pay, but hoping to get a bargain I said no and wandered off some more and the silly man then gave up on me and walked back to his stall….. I had to return like the prodigal son and say that yes I did in fact want the bag for 10 Euros!  I felt quite stupid, but I’m really happy with my bag J

We then met up with Riccardo and set off for a winery near to Lucca.  Riccardo had arranged for us to have a wine and olive oil tasting and a light lunch up there.  Ohmysoul,  I do so love Tuscany.  You know how you have soul-mates?  Well Tuscany is my soul-land!  I love absolutely everything about it.

The drive up to the winery was quite something - it was really, really beautiful, but the actual driving part was quite the adventure!  The road was narrow and it had lots of hair-pin bends.  At first when Riccardo began to toot his hooter at every corner, I thought “how sweet, he is chasing the pigeons out of the road”… then it dawned on me, he was hooting to alert any on-coming drivers who couldn’t see us around the sharp bends on the extremely narrow road… Frightening I tell you!

In any event, we made it to the winery unscathed.  The winery was just lovely. 

I could buy the entire farm and move there tomorrow. Well if I had a couple of million Euro lying about I could!

I even found my first Tuscan pet!

The farm is part vine-yard and part olive grove. So beautiful it made my heart ache.  Kiara, who took us around was delightful and her English was great too (she told us she’d spent 3 years in the winelands of the Western Cape.)  She first showed us the layout of the buildings on the farm, which have remained relatively unchanged for about 300 years or so.  We then moved on to the tour of the actual winery which was fascinating.

Once done with that we saw how the olive oil was produced, their equipment has since been upgraded somewhat, what you see below is the old equipment.

Finally we ended up in the wine cellar where she taught us how to tell a good olive oil from a bad one – a good olive oil should smell like freshly mown grass, who knew?  We tasted some of their olive oil (which did indeed smell strongly of freshly mown grass!) with lovely home-made bread and provolone cheese – very delicious as was the white wine that accompanied it.  We then had bruschetta with fresh tomato and basil, it was quite heavenly, paired with a lovely rose wine.   We finally moved on to some cold meats, with ciabatta and tasted two of their best red wines, which were very good indeed, so good in fact that we had to immediately buy some to take home.

After our time at the winery we headed back down to Lucca. We saw some lovely villas along the way:

The guy in the pic below clearly didn't have air-con and as Riccardo said: "Italians are great improvisors!"

Lucca is one of the very few cities that still has it’s ancient walls intact. 

The entire old part of the city is surrounded by the great big tree-lined walls. Riccardo offered us the opportunity to cycle along the walls, and although the temperature had by now reached 35ºC, we decided to do it! I mean how often do you get the opportunity to cycle along the walls of a medieval city in Tuscany? We hired a four-seater bicycle (no, I didn’t know they existed either!) and took a leisurely cycle around the old city, stopping for a delicious pineapple gelato along the way. It was so much fun!  I will not ever be able to claim to have done the Tour de France, but did I do the Tour de Lucca?  Damn right I did!! 

After something cold to drink we met up with Riccardo again and he drove us to the old amphitheatre, which has been turned into apartments and shops, a lovely place. 

We did a little bit of shopping and then took a leisurely drive through Lucca. We’d love to have walked around a bit more, but at this point we were all feeling pretty hot and exhausted. It just means we’ll have to come back to Tuscany again… we have unfinished business there J

Riccardo drove us back to our boat where plenty of fluids, swims and showers were the order of the day, before supper in the main dining-room. After supper we went and watched the ice-show “Encore”. It was quite incredible to me that we were sitting on a cruise ship, out on the Med, watching ice-skating! The show was really good.   A wonderful end to a brilliant day.  Did I mention that I am head-over-heels in love with Tuscany??!