Sept. 15 – Today five of our group took a tour of Florence. Susan and I took a guided tour of the Tuscan village of Lucca, the birthplace of Puccini. The village is famous for having a huge red brick wall around the old part of the city. In 180 B. C. the village became a Roman colony and the first walls were built in 56 B. C. The Duomo of San Martin is the most outstanding example of Pisa style outside of Pisa. It was begun in the 11th century and completed in the 15th. While we were in the village it began to rain and it rained hard. Of course we didn’t bring an umbrella and we got a little wet. When we returned to Livorno the streets were flooded and the bus had to take an alternate route to our ship. We arrived and had lunch. Afterwards we walked around the Lido deck and looked over the side of the ship. Huge amounts of fresh produce was being loaded onto the ship and a police officer and a bomb niffing dog was checking everything out.

Today I took another computer class and asked the teacher why it took so long to download pictures and she said because WiFi is slow onboard and I should wait until I get home to upload my pictures.