Florence/Pisa, Italy, Day 1

Today, Paolo picked us up in a van right at the cruise port (ballers).  The plan for today was to see as much as possible of the UNESCO world heritage site, Cinque Terre and Pisa in nine hours.

This is a Google description:

Cinque Terre is a string of centuries-old seaside villages on the rugged Italian Riviera coastline. In each of the 5 towns, colorful houses and vineyards cling to steep terraces, harbors are filled with fishing boats and trattorias turn out seafood specialties along with the Liguria region’s famous sauce, pesto. The Sentiero Azzurro cliffside hiking trail links the villages and offers sweeping sea vistas.

There were LOTS of people hiking these trails too.  Paolo told us a story about how his school class had to do it when he was 11.  I think it is a similar story to Chris hiking in the Tetons with Woody and the Boy Scouts.  Maybe not so fun.

The mountain road was VERY narrow but it was supposed to be two ways. He had to honk the horn at every blind curve.  We had two encounters with the same big garbage truck that looked like we were headed for disaster but Paolo manuvered it with great driving skills.  He didn’t even have any road rage.

We made it to two of these cute villages, Corniglia, Vernazza and also Porto Venere.  They were colorful and scenic.  They specialize in seafood, focaccia bread, olive oil and pesto.  And, some of the worlds best pistachio gelato. We tasted it all except the seafood.

During our long drive, we especially enjoyed our guy Paolo today.  He told non stop stories, from working for Gordon Ramsay to life at home with his chef girlfriend.  He said Ramsay really is that mean, he threw a plate at him once and his girlfriend will cook good food unless she is mad at him.  In that case, he has plain pasta with olive oil.

The end of our tour included a quick trip to the leaning tower of Pisa.  This was something.  I got goosebumps when we walked up.  It is not leaning as much as it did a while back but it is still pretty impressive.  I guess some smart engineers figured out how to save it.

And that was it.  We both hugged Paolo when we arrived back at our port.  He was something.