Pisa, Italy

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We awoke on Saturday morning to a snow covered Pisa, Italy. We enjoyed touring the Leaning Tower and Duomo of Pisa in the snow. We took the obligatory pictures of the boys trying to prop up the leaning tower before enjoying a wonderful cup of hot chocolate at a small café’ bar at the base of the tower. We are on a quest for the best hot chocolate in all of Italy. So far, Milan’s cup of chocolate is the forerunner for the title! Most of the cups we have enjoyed have tasted like slightly diluted, warm, hot fudge sauce with whipped cream. We will attempt to copy it when we return home!
We departed Pisa driving towards Genova, 85 miles away. What an enjoyable drive through the mountains of Italy, thankfully, the roads were clear but the landscape was sparkling beautifully with the fresh fallen snow. We had remembered to bring some Christmas CD’s, we have finally found some Christmas spirit after a reprieve from the hot, tropical, temperatures of Thailand.
We arrived at the airport of Genova around 1 pm, turned in our car, hailed a taxi and headed for the harbor for our awaiting cruise ship, the MSC Splendida. This is our first cruise experience but we are looking forward to someone else doing the ‘driving’ and much relaxation.
Cruise Embarktion:
This will be quite the multi-national cruise as many countries are represented among the 3500 passengers, 1700 being children! It was a ‘kid’s cruise free’ offer so thus the large child population which is fine by us. We were pleasantly surprised that our cabins were larger than expected. Because of the winter storm that is currently crippling most of Europe we departed 2 hours later than expected. We are all still struggling some with the time change. I took a nap before dinner but Dustin and Ethan skipped their first dinner because they were already in bed!
Nathan, Mark and I enjoyed our first cruise dinner with a whole table of other cruisers that could speak barely any English. Of course I tried to communicate which was difficult between the French and German speakers. I did understand that the ship had been held for a couple at our table because of the snow delays at the airport but unfortunately their luggage didn’t make it, they hope to find their luggage waiting at our first stop on Monday in Olympia, Greece.
Day 1:
Today is a day at sea. We are planning lots of rest, bingo, stage entertainment and lots of eating for the day! It’s quite restful to watch the sea with the Italy coastline in the distant background as we sail on towards Greece.