Cinque Terre = dream

Incredible. Loved it. Go now. To Cinque Terre, Italy that is. I was in complete and total awe of that place, and that was after 5 minutes. Let me catch up to before that point, though.
On the train to La Spezia I planned to sleep the whole way considering the night before. Be warned that if you stand near the bar counter in Rome and someone next to you orders 6 shots of Tequila, your face may be grabbed and your mouth used as the complimentary 7th shot glass, sans lime chaser. Anyways ... just before we pulled out of the station a man came and sat in my compartment with me. We said nothing until I asked in extremely broken Italian which dome we were passing (it was St. Peter`s and I am uncultured). I think that was his go ahead; because he moved to sit right next to me in an empty train compartment with 6 seats, getting all up in that personal bubble we Americans cherish so, and it creeped me out at first. But he then started speaking in fairly broken English about how he would like to learn the language better because he would soon be working in Ireland digging up stuff because he`s an archaeologist.
Victor, as it turns out, was a great compartment partner. He knew just enough English to help me with my Italian, if that makes any sense. We talked the two hours until he got off the train. He`s currently excavating part of the Roman Forum and told me that they (he, actually) just discovered some floor or square of Julius Ceasar and that it might be another tourist spot in a few years. If it is, I can say I met the man who found it and taught him some English to boot!
When Victor left, I thought I might finally get some rest. But 20 minutes later an adorable old couple scooted into the compartment and I awoke. Despite my disheveled appearance and giant backpack, I think this woman genuinely thought I would speak fluent Italian. She learned right away that this is not so. But hey, what`s the fun of a language barrier if you can`t try to ignore it? So we "talked" the rest of the 2 hours - only unlike Victor, these folks didn`t speak a drop of English. So with a combi-Spanish/English/Italian knowledge and a lot of laughing, we had one of the most rewarding conversations of my life. There is so much more to speaking than words.