A one day visit to Livorno and Pisa, Italy

We had quite an adventure getting to the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the port of Livorno, Italy.

We learned one important thing- take a taxi DIRECTLY from the port to the train station in Livorno to get to Pisa. We passed them all up and walked to the town of Livorno. We were intrigued with the quaintness of Livorno and explored for a while.

We happened upon a small boat tour and jumped on. It was $15 euros per person for the 45 minute tour through the canals of the town which is very Venice-like. The tour narration was done in Italian and then repeated in English. The tour was very cool, and we really enjoyed it. It took us under bridges, by old forts, and through canals.

After the tour, we walked around trying to find the train station to get to Pisa to see the famous tower. Many people told us it was close by, but it wasn’t. Many people didn’t speak English well, and our GPS on our phones was having issues. We kept walking and walking, asking people directions who kept telling us we “were very close” or it was “just around the corner”…We kept trying to get an Uber or taxi, but there weren’t any in the area. We ended up walking at least 2 miles with all of the circling around to finally get to the train station.

We finally found the train and bought tickets to Pisa. It was a nice, scenic ride on the train to Pisa- very relaxing after all of the walking.

Once we arrived in Pisa, we still had to find a bus to take us to the tower, but the busses were right outside of the train station and easy to find. We verified with the bus driver that he was going to the tower. The bus dropped us off right outside of the tower. The area around the tower is filled with street vendors and shops. There is a wall hiding the tower. Once you walk through the archway of the wall, the Tower is right there. It’s much smaller than I imagined, but also even cooler to see than I had imagined. The town around it is very cute and has character.

We took an Uber back to the train station for $12 euros so we didn’t have to wait for a bus and miss the train back. When we got back to Livorno, we had a hard time finding a bus or taxi back to the port and didn’t have time to walk the 2 miles. We ran into other tourists from our ship in the same situation. We finally found a collective taxi that agreed to take all of us to the ship for $8 per person. The taxi driver dropped us right off at the ship- just in time for the beautiful sunset from our balcony!😁 What an adventure!