Livorno

With my current taste for novels of a quirky and slightly odd flavour, I've just finished reading a great piece of nonsense fiction by New Zealand author Sarah Kate Lynch. It's called Eating with the Angels and much of it is set in Venice. It's written with tremendous flare, considerable wackiness and quite a passion for Italian food, so of course it reminded me of my own recent visit to that wonderful country.

I have just looked through the photos I published of Pisa, and see I never added the other places I visited. Seeing the sea was mandatory on this trip, so one afternoon, I took myself off to Livorno. A nice enough town, and much larger than Pisa, it exists mainly for its port, which is the third largest in Italy - so I'm told.

Its best feature is its harbour, and what is even better is that the river through the town is also used for mooring thousands of small cruisers, fishing boats and even just rowing boats. I never think of Italians as being great boaters themselves. Having romantic trips in gondolas is one thing, but steering themselves around instead of chowing scrummy delicacies on a sun drenched terrace does not seem to me to tie in with the Italian thing. I must be wrong though. There were throngs of them (boats, I mean, not Italians). I must admit, however, they (the boats again) were all in the harbours and NOT out on the water, so on this occasion, I guess the terraces won!

Now the autumn rain is soaking us every time we set foot outside, these photos help me to remember those golden days. I hope they bring a little sunshine to you too - if you should need it, that is.