November 2018
If you approach with open mind and kind eye, you will find beauty in each place you visit. But, then, there are places you walk into and just be charmed without any effort.
Livorno(population: 158,000) was certainly not the second case. We stopped there only because our cruise ship stopped there. Most people go to Pisa and Florence from there, but we chose to stay in town because we had been to Florence, one of our favorite cities in Italy, and did not need a quick drop-in.
The port of Livorno tried its best to welcome us. There was free WiFi at the makeshift terminal, and a free shuttle was provided to the city center. The port is actually right next to downtown, but the third biggest port in Italy was mainly a container port and getting in and out of the huge port took about 10 minutes.
The shuttle stop in Piazza Grande area was convenient for visiting(map) the Duomo and the Central Market. We did not feel the need to go inside the Duomo, and we walked to the canals around Fortezza Nuova. There seemed to be boat tours offered in these canals, but, Pat’s reaction was: why?
The Central Market showed real local color. You got the feeling some of the merchants have been there for ages. There really wasn’t much evidence of aesthetic concerns in displays. That made us, though, feel that we were part of the local life.
We decided to go to the seaside promenade, Terrazza Mascagni, and went to a news stand to get the bus tickets(1.50 Euros for a ticket good for 70 minutes). The ticket seller told us to get on LAN bus Red, and we did. After 20 minutes of turns and stops in narrow city streets without seeing any evidence of water, we began to wonder whether we were on the right bus.
Turned out, we were supposed to be on the Blue route, not the Red. We had to walk 20-25 minutes to get to where we wanted to go. If people don’t understand you when you attempt to say “Terrazza Mascagni,” then ask about the aquarium(acquario), which is right next to the promenade.
Terrazza Mascagni is a wonderful sunset watching spot, we were told. But we were there in the morning, and there wasn’t a lot to do. So we headed back to the ship.
We ran into a crew member at the shuttle stop, and she was carrying a bagful of snacks and things. Pat jokeed, “don’t they feed you on the ship?” She said she missed non-ship foods after being on the ship for a while.
We were glad we did have a chance to explore this port city and peak into the local scene. Now that we have done it, we will try to venture out to a different place if we came here again as a cruise stop.
Small Wide World 