One rainy afternoon you’re walking around Italy as the sole tourist, so out of place that you can almost be mistaken for a local, and the next day it’s 22 degrees, sunny, and there are droves of lanyard-wearing foreigners bumbling though town. It’s almost as if Mother Nature herself knows, as overnight the wisteria is bursting with purple blooms and the vineyards are stretching themselves awake pushing out green shoots in every direction.

We experienced this shoulder-season-to-peak-season-shift two years ago when we were with Henry in Rome, and were reminded recently during a day trip to Livorno (a cruise port for Tuscany) when we saw the ships lined up and disembarking thousands of passengers into town.

We had gone to Livorno with a three stop promise for Henry — first stop Zara, to get some sunglasses for Tyler as his broke.  (Side note: his new Zara sunglasses broke in the EXACT.SAME.SPOT mere hours after the purchase. What is going on with his head, that he’s just burstin’ through glasses? Weird, right?).  Our next stop was to the pretty checkered boardwalk for lunch and a stroll along the coast, and finally, once he had his nap in the back of the Defender over looking the water, there was the promise to play in the rock pools.

Well, the nap didn’t work out, but otherwise, it was a fabulous sunny day (and if you’re in the area, there was not a North American in sight at the boardwalk or the rock pools, if you prefer to hang with the locals!).

Here are some photos, if you’d like to see,

J xo

Learning to ride, with a friend’s help (ended with a tumble).

Worth the algae stains!