I’m going to start with a quote by Elbert Hubbard. He said, “No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one.” Looking back, that quote sums up our vacation, and it was on full display with what we did on our first day in La Spezia.

It started out innocently enough. I saw a great tour to Florence and Pisa and booked it immediately without really digging in to what a day trip to those places would entail. My plan was to return to the ship and have a leisurely evening, then a morning boat ride to Porto Venere on Saturday followed by a quick wine tasting through Celebrity in the afternoon.

Well, as Jim often says, our plans are only our plans until I change my mind, and never was that more in play than our two days in LaSpezia. Florence and Pisa became a tour with Bella Italia Tours (https://www.bellaitaliatour.com) to Pisa, Lucca, and a Tuscan winery. Saturday’s plans got scrapped for a full day tour of Cinque Terre. As if that wasn’t enough, I started wondering why we were going to eat dinner on the ship when we were in Italy, and a Sunset Dinner Cruise got added to our itinerary.

I’m glad we changed things around. Our tour with Bella Italia was fantastic, and the dinner cruise was pleasant and relaxing, even if it wasn’t quite what we expected. But more about dinner later…I have three other places to write about first!

Our tour with Bella Italia was in a van with two other couples from the ship. We started in Pisa, where we had plenty of time to walk around and take the standard tourist pictures.

We saw something in our wanderings that became a joke focus of our trip. While we were casually shopping the “Flea Market” by the leaning tower we came across a rather graphic David magnet. When we really looked closely every stall had their version of David! From that point on we made it a point to look for tacky souvenirs, and we saw some doozies! Since I know you’re wondering, at the end of the trip we were able to determine that the French are much classier than the Italians or the Spanish when it comes to producing souvenirs!

We left Pisa after about an hour for the short (30ish minute) drive to Lucca. Our guide Mossimo (Max) provided great commentary during the driving segments of the tour which helped pass the time in the van. Once we reached the destinations Max gave us an overview and suggestions, but beyond that we were on our own. That was a little surprising and unexpected, but we still had a very nice day.

Lucca is a charming walled Renaissance town with narrow cobblestone streets and wide ramparts surrounding the old city. Jim and I walked around town on the ramparts, and wove our way through the narrow streets until we found a place for lunch.

Lunch didn’t disappoint! One thing that always strikes me in Europe is how good the food is. It’s fresh and not over-processed or loaded with preservatives. I can easily taste the difference between the food in Europe and at home.

The drive from Lucca to the Valle del Sole winery (https://www.valledelsole.eu/en/) was only about 15 minutes, but it was very scenic and I especially enjoyed seeing the pelotons we passed.

At the winery we were treated to a tour of the production facilities and a seated tasting. Such a pleasant afternoon!

The drive back to the port was about an hour. There was plenty to look at, but I was already thinking ahead and hoping we would have time to get back to our cabin for a quick refresh before our sunset cruise.

Here are a couple of ”windshield shots” of things that caught my eye on the way back to the ship.

We ended up having just enough time to get back to the ship and freshen up a bit before we had to leave for our evening tour. It was an enjoyable evening with a handful of things that weren’t expected, but I’m still glad we went.

It was about a 20 minute walk to get to the departure point for our sailing tour. I’m glad it wasn’t more than that…this day was one of just two during the trip that my ankle needed to remind me I had surgery in August. It didn’t hurt, but it was TIRED, and it reminded me it was tired with every step.

The ride to Porto Venere was very relaxing. Unfortunately one of the “unexpecteds” for the evening was that the captain spoke very little English. There was one passenger who spoke Italian, but translation was sporadic so I had to do a lot of Googling to find out exactly what I took pictures of!

We got to Porto Venere about 7:20, and this is where we had a second unexpected moment. We were dropped off, and told to be back at the dock in an hour!😳 I had so many questions! What about sunset? When is dinner?😂

Apparently one of the ladies on the sailing had mentioned she wanted to swim, so we all had to get off the boat so she could take a swim. Needless to say she decided not to swim, but there we were in Porto Venere for an hour. I wasn’t happy…we really didn’t know what was going on, and to this American it was way past dinner time!

We looked at a few restaurants that all seemed like more than we wanted or had time for, and finally settled on a cone of fries. They were hot and delicious and enough to tide us over until dinner which at this point I was hoping wouldn’t end up being breakfast!

It was close to 8:30 when we got back on the boat and the captain seemed surprised that we wanted to see the sunset, but with some convincing from the Italian speaker he reluctantly took us back out to the bay to see the end of the sunset.

We headed back to the calm waters near Porto Venere for dinner, and that was when we had a third unexpected glitch. They were just about to serve dinner (at 9:00) when one of the ladies made a big stink about not liking pesto, so we all had to wait while the cook/helper made a separate bowl of pasta with red sauce.

The food was fine, but by that time I was exhausted and had kind of lost interest in dinner. I nibbled a little, enjoyed the view, and was very thankful when the crew cleaned up the food and headed back to port!

We had a great day, but we were beyond exhausted and knew we had to get up very early again the next day. This trip really let us know that we need to do a MUCH better job of scheduling our tours and allowing for down time when we’re in Europe. I can’t imagine trying to keep this pace on the next trip when we’ll be gone almost 5 weeks!