In my enthusiasm about Cinque Terre I forgot to write about our adventure to get there.  We had decided to take a train from Rome that morning, but being we wanted to go with Michelle’s mom to the airport first we almost missed it; in fact had the train not been delayed by 5 minutes we would have.  Our plan was to take the train to Pisa, stop off to see the Leaning Tower then hop back on a train to La Spezia and eventually on to the Cinque Terre.  Just half an hour outside of Pisa the train stopped and everyone was getting off, we didn’t know what was going on until a young roman boy who looked like he could have been a centurian informed us that a man jumped in front of the train and we would be delayed.  It looked like we were going to have forego Pisa.  Fortunately however, the delay wasn’t that long and we did get there with about 3 hours to spare.  So, hopping in a cab we gave new meaning to the phrase “griswalding it” as Michelle would say in reference to the classic Chevy Chase movie.  So we took a cab to the tower, took your obligatory campy pictures with the other thousand tourists trying to hold it up, then enjoyed ourselves a lunch of pizza and beer before we headed back to the train station.  I didn’t learn anything about the tower and it wasn’t the most enlightening traveling experience I’ve had, but it was fun and cheesy, and sometimes that’s just enough.