Travel - May 18 –
Saturday – Livorno, Italy, and May 19 – Civitavecchia (Rome)
Livorno, our first stop in Italy; Gelato, the world’s best
espresso. YES! For cruise purposes, the port of Livorno
serves to get people off the ship and onto buses for visits to Florence, Pisa
and the rest of Tuscany. We had
previously seen this part of Italy so we enjoyed leisure on our own time close
to the port and the old part of this city of 160,000. Very interesting streets, some attractive
architecture and open air markets were a few of the things we enjoyed.
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Livorno Harbor
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However, Livorno is just a port city and is
fairly shabby with little to offer the normal tourists. We are not, however, normal tourists and
enjoy the little nooks where no one else looks.
Our real find was an Indian owned shop of metal decorations for making
jewelry. We spent a few hours there
re-supplying my bench stock for making jewelry items. What a toy store! A wall or two of beautiful stones and silver
pieces to choose from; I was in heaven!
Livorno (Italian: [liˈvorno], English traditionally Leghorn (/lɛɡˈhɔrn/, /ˈlɛɡ.hɔrn/,/ˈlɛɡɔrn/), is a port city on the Tyrrhenian
Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a
population of approximately 161,000 residents in 2011.
Livorno was
designed as an "ideal town" during the Italian Renaissance, when it
was ruled by the Grand Duke of the Medici
family. Major additions were designed by
the architect Bernardo Buontalenti at the
end of the 16th century. The Medici port was overlooked and defended by towers and fortresses leading to the town center.
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Civitavecchia Harbor
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On Sunday,
May 19th , we arrived in Civitavecchia, which is ninety minutes from
Rome, yet advertised as Rome’s port. Not
exactly!
Civitavecchia [tʃivitaˈvɛkkja] is a town and comune of
the province of Rome in the central Italian region of Lazio. A sea
port on the Tyrrhenian Sea, it is located 80 kilometres west-north-west of Rome, across the Mignone river. The harbor is
formed by two piers and a breakwater, on which is a lighthouse. The name
Civitavecchia means "ancient town".
This is about all we can say about Civitavecchia as this is about all we
saw of it.
Anyway, we
joined a scrum of about 1,000 other people who boarded about twenty or more buses for the trip into Rome at 7:30 AM.
The driver let us off along the northeast wall of the Vatican around 9
AM. Trying to get into St. Peter’s
Square was almost too tough to handle, and crowds were extra-large in the
continuing celebration of Pope Francis.
We are not trained to estimate crowds, but our guess would be that about
150,000 people were present. We decided
to wander outside the Vatican and let the crowd disperse following the Pope’s
public remarks at noon.
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Vatican
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Rome is one
of those should-see places and the contrasts and variations in texture are
profound: imperial but crumbling, polished but squalid, refined but shabby, and
wealthy but destitute.
Rome (/ˈroʊm/; Italian: Roma pronounced [ˈroːma] ; Latin: Rōma) is a city and special commune ("Roma Capital") in Italy. Rome is the capital of Italy and also of Lazio (Latin: Latium). With 2.8 million residents in 1,285.3 km2(496.3 sq mi),
it is also the country's largest and most populated commune and fifth-most
populous city in the European Union by population
within city limits. Between 3.2 and 3.8 million people live in the Rome urban and metropolitan area. The city is located in the central-western portion
of the Italian Peninsula, on
the Tiber within the Lazio region
of Italy. Rome is referred to as "The Eternal
City", a notion expressed by ancient Roman poets and writers.
Rome's
history spans more than two and a
half thousand years, since its founding in 753 BC. It is one of
the oldest cities in Europe. In the ancient world it was successively the
capital city of the Roman
Kingdom, the Roman
Republic and the Roman
Empire, and is regarded as one of the birthplaces
of western civilization. Since the
1st century AD, Rome has been considered the seat of the Papacy and in the 8th century it became the capital of
the Papal States, which
lasted until 1870. In 1871 Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, and in 1946 that of the Italian
Republic.
After
the Middle Ages, Rome was
ruled by popes such as Alexander
VI and Leo
X, who transformed the city into one of the
major centers of the Italian Renaissance, along
with Florence. The
current version of St Peter's Basilica was
built and the Sistine Chapel was
painted by Michelangelo. Famous
artists and architects, such as Bramante, Bernini and Raphael resided for some time in Rome, contributing to
its Renaissance and Baroque architecture. The Sistine Chapel was closed for renovation and we were unable to visit this beautiful building. It is a good thing we had seen it before.
Monuments
and museums such as the Vatican
Museums and the Coliseum are among the world's most visited tourist
destinations with both locations receiving millions of tourists a year. It seemed to us as though there were that
many tourists there. Boy, was it
crowded.
John and I
walked around Rome most of the day. We
had lunch at a pretty little restaurant on the Piazza Navona, where many
artists display their art for sale.
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Piazza Navona
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Then
we walked over to the Campo de Fiori where the flowers and vegetables are
sold.
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Campo de Fiori
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Of course we had our share of
gelato, café and pizza. When in Rome…and
we did. It was my third time back and I
still have not seen everything. The sad
thing is that every time I come back it looks a little more run down and
sootier. The marble is so hard to keep white.
The slow economy is evident in Italy.
There are many shops closed and people unemployed. Let’s all hope for better times to come.
Tomorrow is Naples,
Italy….come join us and share in our adventure!
See you next time!
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