Nice, Cannes, Pisa, and Tuscany!

Hellooo! I’m back! We’ve (finally) figured out the Internet situation! Wahoo!! I will be typing up my blogs in Microsoft Word then posting them online to save time.

We’ve been very busy these past few days and are having an absolute blast, you guys! Barcelona, Nice, Cannes, Pisa, and Tuscany these are all the places we have been in the past 3 days! Who in the world can say that?!

I’ve already given you guys a brief recap of Barcelona, so let’s go right into our day yesterday…Nice and Cannes, France! I felt very in my element in Nice and Cannes, because I could understand the people! That’s right, I might be a little rusty, but I still can whip out my French when I need to!
For this day, we chose to do a shore excursion that the boat offered called “Nice and Cannes on your own”. Basically, a tour bus took us to a Nice, left us for 2 hours to explore on our own, then took us to Cannes, and sent us out on our own for 3 hours. In Nice, we walked through a flower market that goes on every morning until about 12pm in the square every day. WOW! The market was beautiful, so fragrant and fresh! Not near as big as the market we visited in Barcelona before boarding the ship, but still very captivating. We all remarked we’d never seen flowers, fruits, or vegetables smell so good or look so vibrant. After strolling through the market, we walked to a local Patisserie (pastry shop) where we bought sandwiches and Cokes for lunch. Yep, that’s right…I got to use my French speaking skills to order lunch for everyone. I started out a like rough, but I got better and we got exactly what we wanted! Pretty sure I surprised and impressed the fam, which was an added bonus. (Mmk, let’s be honest, I surprised myself by being able to successfully recall my French speaking skills after a year of not using the language!) We ate our sandwiches on a ledge that sat above the beach. Beautiful lunch local! We were surprised to see that the beaches in Nice had rocks in the place of sand. Ouch! Didn’t look too comfortable. No sand castles there, I suppose! After lunch we strolled around the town square and took in the sights, sounds, people, and various shops. Nice was beautiful and such a fun place to spend the morning.
Next, we headed to Cannes. Some of you may know this famous city from the famous film festival that takes place there every year. The tour guide described Cannes as the L.A. of France. The similarities were endless: the crowded streets, fancy cars all around, streets full of high-end stores (you know, like Gucci, Prada, Dior), and their equivalent to the stars on Hollywood Blvd: hand prints of famous stars all around the main strip in town. We took pictures on the red-carpeted stairs leading up to the theater where the film festival is held every year. Em and I struck a pose, of course. (Are any of you surprised?!) We also walked around and looked at all of the stars’ handprints. We found Sylvester Stallone’s, Sharon Stone’s, Angelina Jolie’s, and Meg Ryan’s to name a few. While in Cannes, we also walked around and looked at all the massive yachts parked in the famous port. We ended our time in Cannes by sitting at an outside café enjoying Cokes and a crepe for me! :) Parfait!
We were all so pooped by the time we got back from Nice and Cannes that we ate dinner and spent the rest of the night in our beds preparing for the next day! What a day! Nice and Cannes were beautiful!

Now, let’s get to today’s excursions: Pisa and Tuscany! Everyone agreed that today was the best stop, thus far! We booked 2 half-day excursions today. The first took us to the town of Pisa, where, of course, the Leaning Tower of Pisa stands (crookedly) in Miracle Square. Everyone has seen a photo or drawing of this famous landmark, I’m sure, but let me assure you, you cannot fully appreciate it until you stand in front of it! As we rounded the corner and looked up to finally catch our first glimpse of the tower all of us were scrambling to get out cameras or tell another our reaction to seeing it for the first time. It is so crazy! Its literally leaning! The lean is so insane! I believe the lean is now 14 degrees and experts thought it was finally going to fall a few years back and shut down tours going up inside of it. However, it didn’t fall and they once again allowed tourists to go up in the tower. Guess what….WE CLIMBED IT!! Yep, all 294 steps to the top!! The spiral staircase was crazy; you could feel the lean as you walked up. It got easier when you got to the leaning side and harder to climb when you were on the side not at a tilt. The climb was long and quite challenging. The steps were made out of marble, which is already a very slick surface, but add in all the wearing that has taken place over the years and you get very indented and slick stairs to climb up and down. In places the stairs got VERY narrow. I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it through the skinny-minny opening! In the end, we all made it to the tippy tippy top and got some really neat pictures! Oh and of course we got a pictures pushing the tower over and holding it up, as did every other tourist in the square! Our trip to Pisa was a complete success!! Before I go on to tell you all about our trip to Tuscany, let me tell you guys a joke our tour guide in Pisa told us. She said the tower is not the only thing that leans in Pisa, the cathedral leans, the baptismal leans, ALL the buildings lean, and so you can see why the most popular name in Pisa is Ilene! (Cheesy, yes. Funny, definitely!)
Let’s talk about Tuscany now. Our excursion in Tuscany was a wine tasting tour. As you guys may or may not know, Tuscany is famous for their wines and olives, and olive oil. The tour took us to a vineyard in a town in Tuscany called Monte Carlo (not the one in France), where we were able to taste 3 of the 4 wines produced there. I must tell you that we had no time between the 2 tours, so we had no time to grab lunch. Needless to say we were STARVING! Another dirty little secret about the Patterson family is that we all get very mean when we are hungry. Luckily, though, we all kept it together until we got to the wine tasting and were offered a buffet of meats, cheeses, biscotti, breads, and olives. All very fresh and all very tasty! Unfortunately, our tour was a bit rushed and parts were cut out due to rainy weather. Still, we had a really great time in the Tuscanny countryside.

Tonight we had dinner in the main dining room. The food has been very good so far and the servers are friendly. After dinner, we watched Claire Maiden (from the UK), who works as a vocal coach on the X factor and Britain’s Got Talent, perform. She is a beautiful singer and brilliant pianist. Since we still had a little energy left after the show, we headed to deck 15 to the “Lawn Club”, where they have real grass growing, to watch the Blown Glass Show that is set up on the boat. We went last night to watch the guys blow glass and were in awe, and were dying to go back. Their work with the glass is completely amazing! All in all, its been a great day and an awesome first few days on our trip!
We have an early morning tomorrow, we have to be ready at 7:25am, so I better get some sleep. We are in Rome, Italy tomorrow, so we’ll be visiting the Vatican museum, Coliseum, and St. Peter’s Basilica. Look for a blog about our day sometime tomorrow night! :)