Sun, 4/13/25    Pisa, Italy

Day 98 - Sunday, April 13th, 2025 – Pisa, Italy

I would say I slept horribly, but I’m not sure I slept at all. We were up by 4 o’clock. We had breakfast in the room. We were out the door by 8:30. When we got off the ship and our tour guide was there. The van was right near the ship, which was nice. It was cool and gray. It was drizzling a little. Marzia, our tour guide, showed up at the van. It was a van that had a ramp. It seems like a shorter ramp so the push-up the ramp was going to be challenging. She had her daughter with her, but the daughter was not allowed inside the gate, so Mary and her had to get me up the ramp. They succeeded, thankfully.

We drove out of the gate and picked up the daughter. We drove straight to Pisa. We got out of the van and walked the short way before we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa. I will let the pictures do the talking for the most part. We wandered around there for an hour. We all went into the church for a short time. Mass just started so we had to be quiet. Mary went and sat in one of the pews for a few minutes. It was an old church. You could tell by the size of stained glass windows. The windows were small, which means that it had to be an older building. As it turns out, it was built around 1100. We went over to the Leaning Tower by itself and took several pictures. Seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa was cool. How many times have we seen it on TV? We can say we saw it in person. It was raining pretty steadily so we did not spend a lot of time there. We walked over to a café on the corner. We had coffee, tea and cookies. It was a nice break. The coffee was very good. It was strong without being bitter. The cookies were very good also. We sat there for about an hour. On the way back to the van Mary bought her postcards, refrigerator magnets, and T-shirts. She also bought the stamps. Mission accomplished.

We got back in the van and drove an hour into the Tuscan region. Eventually, we pulled up to a winery called San Michelea Torri. We were greeted by Judy, the winery tour guide. We did our introductions and she gave us a tour of the building. This included some examples of wine in stainless steel and wine in various sizes and types of oak barrels. The bigger barrels provided less oak touching, so there was less tannins. They all varied in the amount of time in the barrels before bottling. From there, Mary went downstairs to see where the big barrels were kept. It was in an area that would be considered a bomb shelter because in the times of war people would hide down there from the bombs, apparently.

From there, we had a multi wine tasting. The place is completely organic so they have their own pigs, chickens, olives, cheese, everything. Everything is organic and everything is fresh. I had hard boiled eggs that were inside the chicken about an hour before I ate them. There was prosciutto which Mary liked, as did I. There was a second version of prosciutto that was boiled with something. I didn’t care for that. Mary did. There was bread. Oh yeah, olive oil. They have the best olive oil on earth according to Mary. It was good. I’m not an expert on olive oil so I leave that up to her. We tried three different reds. The winery is in the Tuscan region right between the Chianti Clasico area and the super Tuscan area. So we tested a Quito Classico, which we really liked. The Tuscan was OK but not for what it was going to cost us. Seems like $40 a bottle. It was not $40 good. We tried their dessert wine, which was pretty good. At the last minute, Mary asked about the white wine. We sampled one white wine, which we really liked so we bought a bottle of that. All totaled, we bought four bottles of wine. There were two reds and two whites. Mary also bought cookies and bread. And olive oil times too. We got the bread for no cost. We said our goodbyes and loaded back up into the van.

From there, we drove an hour back down into the city. We were on the lookout for an ATM so Mary could get more euros. That did not happen. We looked at two or three places. Finally, they dropped us off at the cruise terminal. We said our goodbyes. We went our way and they went there. It was a very nice excursion. The weather sucked, but the excursion itself was great.

We made it back onto the ship and into the cabin. We both took naps. We decided, against my better judgment, to go to dinner. In hindsight, I’m glad we went. I had chicken lentil soup, the manager’s, pasta, and trout. I had the fall Sauvignon Blanc for dessert. Mary had the cold soup, salad times two and manager’s pasta for her entrée. She had lemon sorbet for dessert.

We left dinner in order to get to the jewelry store. She made it just in time. Unfortunately she did not win anything. We walked over to the casino and got updated lottery tickets. From there, we stopped at the guest the weight of the art item. We put in new entries for that. We made it back to the cabin. We updated these notes so I can write the actual log in a day or so. Another successful day. We have to get ready for another long day tomorrow.