After a relaxing night on the ship in Livorno, we took an excursion to Florence, one of our favorite (the favorite?) cities in the world. When we went to Europe the first time in 1973, we went with no plan and no reservations, just a general idea of where we wanted to go using our student Eurail passes, this for an 11 week trip. We had penciled in two nights for Florence. However, when we got there we didn’t want to leave and stayed 6 nights. We would have stayed longer, but we had one firm date (other than the return flight home) and that was to meet and stay with my relatives in Southern Italy that we had never met. We were really looking forward to this visit to Florence and we went back for another 3 nights last year. We are looking forward to a return visit to this amazing city, the heart of the Renaissance.

The excursion to Florence included a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery, where there works by da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Rembrandt and others. Livorno is almost two hours from Florence; the excursion was about 10 hours and about 3- 4 hours of that was in the Uffizi. The tour guide for the Uffizi was great. We had some free time and met for a great lunch with the tour group at a restaurant next to the Piazza di Santa Croce. During some of our free time we did some shopping and our credit card took a hit in a wonderful leather shop in the Piazza di Santa Croce. It was a long, but wonderful day.

Our tour map for this and a few other excursions was from Trumpy Tours, the tour provider that Viking used. However, it was not related to the former President Donald Trump. From the company website:

Born in 1992 in Genoa, Trumpy Tours provides ground services and excursions for cruise ships. Hugo Trumpy and the Costa family, anticipating the growth of cruise tourism in the Mediterranean and thanks to their ten-year experience, contributed to the growth of the company’s success, driven today by Federico Costa, CEO Giovanni Costa, President and Kielland family Constantly present in the Board of Directors. From generation to generation, Management Trumpy has managed to create a consolidated team, which offers and manages, port for port, unique experience for customers around the world.

The Uffizi was crowded and COVID protocols were starting to be relaxed somewhat; though not required, we chose to wear our masks in the museum.

My previous post can be found at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-803187-1.html, while the first post of this series (that includes a map of all of the places where we stopped) can be found at https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-801137-1.html

Next up: Florence part 2, more of The Uffizi and Florence