A series of articles describing our cruise around the Western Mediterranean with Island Cruises on their ship, the Island Star. Our Itinerary will be: Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Messina, Sicily > Naples, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Toulon, France > Barcelona, Spain > Palma, Majorca.
Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the photographs below. A link at the end of each article will bring you back to this index page.
Saturday, 18 May 2019. We arrive in Livorno to find dark skies and teeming rain. We have brought no coats. We are booked on a boat trip around the canals of Livorno. We are at the back of the queue which means everyone else gets under the awning...
It was raining far too hard to think of taking photos. The tour guide (under the canopy) held up a few packets of polythene raincoats and looked directly at us. "We have some rain jackets for sale..." We're from Blackpool. We won't dissolve. I drew the sketch once we got home from a photo taken on a previous visit. I left a few boats out that were tied up along the side but otherwise this gives you an idea of the view, if not of the rain.
After the boat ride we squelched towards a large building that we recognised again from a previous visit. This is the indoor market of Livorno. The Mercato delle Vettovaglie, as it is known locally, is a huge building which dates from the late 1800s and houses 34 shops and some 230 stalls, primarily selling food but with a few craft or gift stalls here and there. You will find butchers' stalls with beef hind quarters and rows of rabbits hanging, fresh fish stalls, cheese and dairy stalls, wine, biscuits, sweets... There's lots to see and smell! It was crowded. Apart from the usual clientele just about every tourist in Livorno was sheltering in there! We managed to bag a table at a cafe stall and had our beloved latte machiatto - the same size as a small latte over here in the UK but costing less than two euros each! Again, the sketch was done at home. Last night in fact...
Finally our morning excursion was taking us to "the seaside". It had almost stopped raining by now but, as you can see, the weather was not promising to be good quite yet! To get to this checkerboard promenade we have had to wade a bit through puddles and standing water.
I thought I'd spotted a shortcut by going into the aquarium and out the far end of the reception area, but the rear doors opened onto a large flooded area and there would have been no hopping across that particular puddle!
It looked no brighter out to sea, where a handful of ships were heading towards the industrial port of Livorno.
Wednesday 23 May 2018. We come into the port of Livorno, primarily an industrial port.
A ship to the side of our cabin is already unloading large bales of wood pulp onto lorries and has still not finished when we leave the port at eight oclock that night.
The Kaluga, off our port side, is an oil tanker, built in 2003 and registered in Liberia. I was looking online for a reason why it might be apparently pouring water out of its anchor ports all day, but without any success. Any nautically knowledgable replies will be given due consideration!
From here, tours set out by coach to both Florence and Pisa. You can even do both in one day. We've been here before a few times so this time we have decided to have a walk through Livorno itself, though that will involve getting a shuttle bus through the port as it's a large and maze-like place with lots of lorries and cranes moving about so you are not allowed to walk through the port.
The shuttle bus drops us off at a shopping mall in the centre of the (admittedly quite small) town. But we have forgotten our map and have no idea which way we are facing... We do know that the town is ringed by canals because one year we took a boat trip along them. So I assumed that if we walk in a straight line we will eventually come to a canal. All well and good. Except that Miss Franny doesn't like walking in straight lines and keeps saying "We'll go this way..." until not only do I not know which way I'm facing but I have no idea how to get back to the shuttle bus stop!
So we just set off. I know the canals go all the way round the town so we are bound to come to them sooner or later even walking in zig-zags and as long as we can eventually find our way back we'll be ok. Worst case scenario is stopping people and asking for MacDonalds which might make us appear to the Italians like the ultimate in food buffoons but would get us to the bus stop!
And look-it! A canal. Now, as I said, we have previously done a boat trip along them. But as you can see here, they are set quite low down so from a small boat you don't see much apart from the top storeys of buildings...
From today's viewpoint we could revel in the architecture of such things as doors, kerb stones, all manner of things.
The sun was bright. The temperature was climbing. My vitamin D levels were replenished to bursting. I was running out of things to say...
At around this point we crossed a road, watching for cycles which, a bit like Amsterdam, have their own little road at the side of the main road and which seem to come in both directions regardless of what side of the road you are crossing. A young lady on a bike stopped and waved us on to cross which we did with a wave. As she started to push off, I saw another bike whizzing up behind her and saved her life (well, saved her from injury at least) as the prat zoomed by just an inch or two from her.
You can have too much of a good thing - even canals, so we went in search of a drink which I found in a deserted cafe. So deserted that there was no one in sight behind the counter... I called out "Ciao!" and there was a muffled acknowledgement from the door to the kitchens and I bought drinks and we sat at a table on the pavement watching people stagger past with bags overflowing with veg and fruit from the large market hall up the road.
A bit of shade came as a relief as we headed back - or forward - to wherever we were going, because we had no idea... Hey it's not even dinner time yet, no problem!
We ended up at a huge piazza. This is (though I didn't know it at the time) the Piazza della Repubblica and confused me by being built lengthwise over a canal. I mean - fancy doing that to a man with no map! It was built in 1844, requiring the demolition of one of Livorno's old city gates and joined the centre of Livorno to the east of the town where new districts were growing.
It had statues of both Ferdinand III and Leopold II, the latter being damaged by a crowd in 1849 and thereafter removed. He was seen as a symbol of Austrian domination. We picked a street at random and followed it all the way to a familiar bit and then for the first time in my life I felt a surge of relief upon finding MacDonalds!
A series of articles covering our holiday with David and Miss Jeannie (Creeping Bentgrass on tour!) on the Thomson Dream cruise ship. We'll be calling at Palma, Majorca > Day at Sea > Ajaccio, Corsica > Civitavecchia, Italy > Livorno, Italy > Puccini's house at Torre del Lago, Italy > Pisa, Italy > Villefranche, France > Barcelona, Spain. At some point we'll be treated to a storm with storm force eleven winds and a somewhat rough sea with decks closed and lots of people turning green.
I usually take something like 300 photographs during a week's cruise. David came back with 2000... I have therefore had to be ruthless when it came to selecting photos for these articles unless I was willing to write - and you, dear readers, were willing to read for as long as it took us to live through the cruise!
Each of the photographs below will take you to the related article and photographs.
Wednesday 22 May 2013. Early morning once again and also once again David and Jeannie are up on deck well before we tumble up the steps to the Promenade Deck. By the time we get there we are well into the port. David has taken a good hundred photos of ships of all sorts and we are passing an empty row of dockside cranes.
Presumably the operator of the nearest crane does haircuts in his spare time...
We are moving very slowly and pass the Catharina Schulte which is being unloaded to our starboard side.
The photos hardly do her justice - she is huge. Each of those metal containers is a lorry load and they are stacked 12 across and up to six high. There are at least ten rows of the same from front to rear of the ship not counting the hold of the ship! So without counting what she carries inside there are 360 lorry loads stacked on the deck.
As we pass by, leaving the cranes behind on the opposite side a couple of hundred containers are waiting for a fleet of lorries to pick them up and take them to where they need to go.
Fran threads her way through the deck loungers. It's still early enough for the deck to be deserted yet. A few passengers are at breakfast, but the majority are being sensible and are still snoring...
This is the self-service counter breakfast bar. David has sneaked into the middle of the unsuspecting half-asleep passengers and snapped them in the midst of their jollity... We decided that self-service was much too common and descended a few decks to be waited upon!
