Handpicked experience · Pisa
Pisa, Italy
A private shore day out of Livorno to two walled Tuscan cities, built around getting cruise passengers back to the berth with time in hand.
Private air-conditioned transport with a driver-guide from Livorno port
Pisa and Lucca in a single private day, with stops arranged around you
Help finding the best vantage points for photographing the Leaning Tower
A return to the port timed for cruise passengers
Livorno is a working port rather than a destination, and almost everyone arriving by ship leaves it immediately. This day takes the two cities within comfortable reach — Pisa, half an hour up the coast, and Lucca, half an hour beyond that — and structures the hours around the one constraint that governs a cruise call: being back before the gangway closes.
You are collected inside the port and driven north. Pisa comes first, and the part everyone comes for sits in a walled green enclosure at the edge of the city rather than in its middle: the cathedral, the baptistery and the tower standing together on grass, which is not what the photographs lead you to expect. Your driver knows where to stand for the picture everyone wants and will spare you the twenty minutes of wandering it otherwise takes.
Lucca follows. It is the quieter of the two and, for many people, the better: an intact ring of Renaissance ramparts encircling a town of narrow streets, with an oval piazza built into the footprint of a Roman amphitheatre. Cars cannot enter, so you are dropped outside a gate and walk in.
The return to Livorno is timed to leave margin, and you are back inside the port rather than at its perimeter.
Worth understanding precisely. An independent operator commits to a schedule that returns you well before all-aboard, and builds in slack for traffic. What it cannot do is hold the ship — only the cruise line's own excursions carry that. In practice the margin here is generous and the distances are short, and we give you the intended return time when you book, which normally leaves an hour spare.
Climbing it is not included and needs a timed slot bought in advance, which sells out in season. There are around two hundred and fifty steps, worn into a curve by centuries of feet and genuinely disorienting because the whole structure leans as you climb. Bags are not permitted and small children are turned away. Plenty of people are content to photograph it and walk on.
The city walls are wide enough to have been planted with trees and turned into a promenade, a four-kilometre circuit around the entire town at rooftop height. Walking a stretch of it is the single most enjoyable thing available in either city, and it opens no wallet at all.
Set expectations here. This is two cities in one day, not the countryside — no vineyards, no hill towns, no cypress avenues. Those need a different itinerary and more hours than a ship's call allows.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
The schedule is built with a wide margin and the distances are short. Be clear on the distinction though: an independent operator returns you early, but only the cruise line's own excursions oblige the ship to wait. We give you the planned return time when you book.
No. It needs a separately purchased timed ticket that sells out in the busier months. Bags are not allowed up and small children are not admitted.
Around two hundred and fifty steps, hollowed into a curve by centuries of use, and disorienting because the lean shifts underfoot as you spiral. Many visitors are happy to photograph the tower from the grass instead.
Different rather than better. Pisa has the more famous single sight; Lucca has the more pleasant hour, particularly on the walls, and far fewer people on its streets.
Not really. This is two walled cities in a day. Vineyards, hill towns and the landscape most people mean by Tuscany need a longer itinerary than a port call allows.
No, entrance charges to any monument are separate. The most rewarding parts of both cities — the enclosure at Pisa and the ramparts at Lucca — are open to walk without a ticket.