Day 5 – August 10th, 2006

Seth sees on the cruise channel news this morning of a foiled terrorist attempt to blow up a bunch of planes headed to America. He decides not to alarm Amy by mentioning any of this to her. He worries about what happened, what might still happen, and what this might mean for the return flight home from Venice to Philadelphia.

Today started off by going down to the theater to gather for the morning’s shore excursion to Pisa and Viareggio. Although the theater was completely empty except for one other couple, we anticipated that the seats would fill up, so we did as we have done before and went to the first open seat after the other couple, sitting down right next to them. After about 15 minutes of awkward, idle chit chat, we come to realize that nobody else is coming for this shore excursion and we’ve sat down next to the only other two people in the theater. Luckily, through conversation we discover that this couple is also from Cleveland. And the girl’s name is Amy! Small world!

We head to the Field of Miracles where the leaning tower of Pisa is. We are warned upon getting off the bus that there are many pick-pockets and we should be very careful. Sounds like a great place to vacation… Although Seth thought the learning tower of Pisa was smaller than he expected it to be, it truly was amazing to see such an odd sight. The rows and rows of merchants selling miniature replicas of the tower reminded Seth of the Superman movie where evil-Superman straightened out the tower. Seth tried (see original picture of Seth pushing up the tower) but was unable to duplicate this feat. After purchasing tickets to go into the cathedral, we realized that the line was too long and we wouldn’t be able to use the ticket. So now we have a great ticket (not ticket stub, mind you) souvenir from Pisa. Enough history and architecture, on to some fun in the sun at the beach!

We take the tour bus over to the beautiful beach in Viareggio. The scenery is something that we’ve never seen before and can’t imagine seeing anywhere else in the world. We debate between staring at the open sea, the beautiful beach, or the picturesque mountains in the background. The mountains win. We spend the next 45 minutes in the sea while hopping over waves and admiring the marble-capped mountains. Yes, marble-capped – we are told the white on the mountains is not snow, but rather marble that gets mined and used for just about everything out here. We decide to dry off in the sun and just relax. Soothing. Very soothing – now this is a honeymoon! We then spend the remainder of the time walking up and down the beach, trying to avoid random soccer balls and jellyfish. Oh yeah, there were jellyfish all over the place. After we had dried off we decided to go back into the water only to find a HUGE jellyfish, much bigger than the Hilton Head variety that the Libman Family is well acquainted with. We decide that the water is no longer a safe place, despite the many other people comfortable to be wading in the water (some of whom are topless even – are these people crazy?!). We decide to grab a bite to eat at the local restaurant that is attached to the beach. No more experimental meals, we’ve had our fill – two slices of cheese pizza, thank you very much. Apparently cheese pizza is called Margherita pizza here. At this point Amy sees on the TV about the foiled terrorist attempt – it seems to be on every channel at every moment of the day. We decide to try to not let this worry us. It seems like everything is okay and the plot was stopped before anything could continue. We are now expecting not to be able to carry anything on with us for our return flight. 8 hours and no book, no discman (yeah, we know, we need to invest in an ipod one of these days – although we could maybe just borrow Mom or Dad L.’s…). I suppose we might have to actually talk to each other on the return flight home. We’ll probably just try to sleep through it instead. J

Dinner this evening was great. We both ordered practically the same exact meal at the restaurant. We don’t think that moment has ever happened before, unless you count chicken fingers at TGI Fridays as a meal at a restaurant. We follow-up dinner with our nightly contribution to the casino (today’s contribution provided by Debbie and Russ’s wonderful surprise present to us – sorry we couldn’t turn it into more!). We watch as the ship departs and see dozens and dozens of jellyfish around us. We then feel a lot better about our decision not to return into the water in the beach at Viareggio. The fact that we can see this jellyfish from about five stories up means that they are big enough to be scared of. Although let’s be honest – they could be dime-size and I think we would have felt the same way. After watching us disembark, we then we continue on with our other nightly rituals – the quest for a warm, working hot tub (didn’t happen) and a trip to the all-night all-you-can-eat buffet. Seth eats as many carbs as he can fit in his mouth. He is thrilled that they have some warm pizza ready for him, even though it’s been sitting under a heat lamp for the last two hours. We go to bed happy, except for the nagging feeling that we’re going to be waking up in about four hours for our shore excursion tomorrow to Rome. But it’s impossible to be upset about waking up early when you’re waking up early to go to Rome.