Portofino Italy
Originally uploaded by Transit Nerds

The Disney / Pixar animated film “Cars 2” has some amazing graphics showing an imaginary car racing city of “Porto Corsa”. According to Wikipedia the animators created the city based partly on their drives around the coast of northern Italy in Liguria and especially the city of Portofino, located on the Mediterreanean Coast just north of the Cinque Terre, an area we blogged about in 2010 during the family train adventures throughout Europe.

Travelling around Europe on a Eurail Pass is definitely cool, but it also requires more than a little planning if you want to maintain any sort of schedule. With the family of four on the trip I want to have reservations for trains and lodging along the way, but this creates some flexibility challenges since we are fixing a lot of dates.