Oh, guys...there is so much I have to tell you! I am not even sure how to organize it all in my head as I am bursting with all the vibrant memories and exciting new experiences for our family! I don't even know where to start...A proper explanation would be most effective, but I'll have to keep it super short.
A few months back, some of our friends from Japan invited us to come on a cruise with them during our spring break. Cruise was an 11-night cruise, and the main attraction was its 2 day stop in Israel. I have been always kind of anti-cruise just because I do like to see each place for longer than 8 hours. And the route was not that attractive to me. But then, due to the unrest in Israel, the cruise line decided to cancel its stops in Israel and add more stops in Greece and Malta. That was back in December. By then three families were signed up to go on that cruise. Because more Greek Islands were added, I had to look into it. After pricing the trip from London to Greece and a few islands, I realized that the price for the cruise was actually really good. We thought, well, we'd get to see some more exciting places like Izmir, Turkey and Rome AND hang out with some of our best friends for 11 days! So we decided to do the cruise and we convinced our great friends from England to join us as well!!!
And thus began the grand planning of this epic trip--the longest trip that we have ever taken! Longer than Thailand and Singapore or Ukraine trip, as kids liked to remind us. It seems partially super easy to not have to plan food and lodging on such a big trip, but I still had to research quite a bit of information on each port that we stopped at. A lot of preparation also went into making sure things were all sorted back here before we left--Katya was missing five days of school and had to do a lot of extra work before she left (and then after we returned). The boys only missed one day since the British have a very long Easter school break.
So on Thursday night we drove down to Gatwick (2 hours) to stay overnight at a guest house as our flight was leaving at 6:30 am next morning. Our guest house provided a free airport shuttle, which was very convenient at 4:30 in the morning and the airport was only 1 mile away. And added bonus was the fact that we could leave our van at the guest house for the duration of our trip. And so our adventures began!
We flew EasyJet to Pisa, Italy trying to see a few beautiful places on the way to Genoa, Italy, where the cruise started. The flight to Pisa was under two hours long--easy-peasy. We landed around 9:30 am and took a bus straight to the Leaning Tower of Pisa (dragging our suitcases behind). Passing all the souvenir stalls through the town gate, we came out to this beautiful view.
And it was REAL! It is indeed very leaning. Amazing!
We could only spend about half an hour taking pictures while fighting the crowds of tourists (a week before Easter). Couldn't help taking these traditional pictures:
Some people were getting very creative.
Okay. That's not very creative, but it proves that we were here.
This tower is actually a bell tower of the Pisa Cathedral. It is is 55.86 meters (183.27 ft) from the ground on the low side and 56.67 meters (185.93 ft) on the high side.
Its construction began in the 12th century and the builders noticed that was leaning right away. The tilt increased over the decades because of the instability of foundation. Good thing it was stabilized much better in the recent years.
We do wish we had more time to spend and explore this charming small town of Pisa. Instead, we had to take a bus to the train station and catch a train to Genoa. Good thing that we ran into our friends on the platform (and thank goodness the train was running late) and we figured out that the numbers on our ticket were actually Car # and Seat #. Anyway, it all worked out and soon we were on our way to Cinque Terre, in a cozy train compartment Harry Potter style!
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