Our last European adventure when Honeybun was nearly 4 and Sugarplum was 21 months was a Mediterranean cruise to and from Rome with stops in Monaco, Barcelona, Tunisia and multiple places in Italy. One of the Italian cities we visited was Pisa which was not even on our original itinerary. We were originally scheduled to visit Santa Margherita but the day we left Rome we were informed that we would not be allowed to anchor at Santa Margherita so would be going to La Spezia instead. We had tried to plan a day trip to Genoa from Santa Margherita but were unable to get it arranged and were thankful once we found out about the change!
Because we had not researched La Spezia, we decided to do a cruise sponsored tour to Pisa. This was our third cruise and was the only ship run tour we ever did. With the little ones, it was easier to arrange and do our own thing than to be stuck with a large ship group where we were tied to the schedule of the tour.
We boarded a large tour bus for the tour through Tuscany from the port to Pisa. It was a somewhat foggy day but the views were still beautiful.
We arrived in Pisa and were given a tour of the small old town area and taken through the Basilica before having a few hours to explore the city on our own. The girls were not a big fan of the group tour and didn’t understand why we couldn’t go here or there and why they had to be quiet in the Basilica, but we survived the tour portion and really enjoyed the rest of our visit.
We did not go up in the tower, but spent a good amount of time answering all of Honeybun’s questions about why it was slanted and how it didn’t fall down and why it was built that way. We also had fun taking pictures in front of the tower!
After perusing the stalls in the market, we stopped for lunch at a local little restaurant. We had pizza and hubby was excited to find Duff beer! After lunch we stopped for some fresh gelato which we were amazed to find Sugarplum was not a fan of but Honeybun loved.
Then back on the bus to the port where we tried to wander around La Spezia but rain and two grumpy little ones sent us back to the ship instead. It wasn’t a long visit, but we saw what we wanted to see and were able to add one more of the world’s most well-known sites on our list and every time the girls see a picture of the Tower of Pisa they can say “We’ve been there!”
