Like Paris and Rome, you can't spend just one day in Florence and feel like you've done anything but scratch the surface.

Today was one of our longest excursions. First of all, the Disney Magic docked at La Spezia, which is about 2 hours by bus from downtown Florence.

It didn't help that, the day we arrived in Florence, there was some kind of political protest which locked up traffic.

Being the last tour group also set us at the rear of the pack, and having a few people who didn't want to follow the group meant that we fell way behind schedule to spend more than a few minutes at Pisa, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We first made our way to Santa Croce basilica, which is the resting place for Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Dante.

From there we walked to the Piazza della Signoria, which is a scenic square with views of Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi Gallery and the numerous statuary, from a copy of Michelangelo's David (placed there in 1910, after the original David was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia), to the fountain of Neptune, Perseus With the Head of Medusa, to Giambologna's The Rape of the Sabine Women.

From here, we walked down the alley by the Uffizi Gallery, which requires you walk the gauntlet surrounded by the statuary of many famous fathers of the Renaissance, from Galileo, Machiavelli, Amerigo Vespucci to Dante and others.

Next, we made an about face and headed for Brunelleschi's "Il Duomo".

After having lunch in a spectacular palace/restaurant, we boarded the bus for Pisa. The last tour group to reach Pisa, and several hours late for a variety of factors, we only got a few minutes in Pisa.

And due to a miscommunication, I ended up running a couple miles to find Christine only to find she had already gone on without me.

Hence, the pictures of me dripping with sweat. After snapping a few pictures of the "Campo dei Miracoli", or the leaning tower, the baptistery, the Camposanto (cemetary) and the Duomo (cathedral), it was time to return to the ship. After an hour bus ride, we finally arrived in La Spezia, 35 minutes after "last tender" and 5 minutes after the ship was scheduled to leave.

Our chances of making the ship were pretty good, however, since we had several Disney castmembers with us, from the photographers in Pisa, to the handful crew members who were managing the tenders.

Half way to the ship, however, the tender suddenly made a course correction, back to the port! Oh, no, were we going to miss the boat? It had already pulled up anchor and appeared to be changing course!?

No, it was a woman and her son back at the tender dock who just made it in the nick of time. By the time we got to the ship, we were already 10 minutes late for dinner (8:40pm-- the ship was scheduled to leave at 8pm).