In Interlaken. The weather is pretty windy, so all the airborn activities keep getting cancelled. Luckily the booking agency is amazing helpful, so we keep rearranging our schedule trying to accomodate the bad weather, and still get skydiving in. Still, yesterday was awesome cause we rented scooters and drove around through the valleys of the alps, then took a gondola up to the top of one of the mountains.
Paris was beautiful. So much gold everywhere, and everything quite grand. The Champs Elysee reminded me a lot of Las Ramblas. Rode on Segues for a little bit. Missed the Louvre by 15 minutes. Got some amazing pictures though. Saw lots of cool stuff. Will get it all down when I get some more time. It's gonna be another set of really long posts.
Ok, off to canyoning!
Saw a great quote today: If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.
Au revoir!
-K3
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Links to Pictures
Barcelona Graffiti:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079538&l=eb71a&id=12806034
BCN Pictures:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079540&l=0ff2c&id=12806034
Works of Igor Mitoraj:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079541&l=0ba5f&id=12806034
Figueres and the Dali Museum:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079544&l=e4f50&id=12806034
Site Visit: Poble Nou and Port Forum:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080544&l=00ac0&id=12806034
Site Visit: Poble Nou and Port Forum (2):
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080557&l=92284&id=12806034
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079538&l=eb71a&id=12806034
BCN Pictures:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079540&l=0ff2c&id=12806034
Works of Igor Mitoraj:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079541&l=0ba5f&id=12806034
Figueres and the Dali Museum:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2079544&l=e4f50&id=12806034
Site Visit: Poble Nou and Port Forum:
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080544&l=00ac0&id=12806034
Site Visit: Poble Nou and Port Forum (2):
http://git.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2080557&l=92284&id=12806034
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
My Projects
Figured I'd give you guys a little taste of the class projects that I'm working on as well, since this is a STUDY abroad program. Hah.
For my Computing and Society class, we have to write a position paper on some topic that sounds relevant to the class. This just means we have to pick a side and argue it. My topic is going to be argueing for the accuracy and validity of Wikipedia. For those of you that have never used or heard of it, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with a catch: it is editable by anyone. While this sounds like it would be a horrible concept just asking for trouble, so far it has enjoyed enormous success. It has articles on nearly everything you can think of, and the vast majority of the time they are very accurate. It also enjoys some perks that normal encyclopedias don't, like for example the rapidity with which a new article will be put up when a new topic comes out. You can read about anything from political issues to marine biology to artificial intelligence. In fact, I frequent just type in topics from my textbooks and read them on Wikipedia instead of from the textbook because they are much more well-written and enjoyable. And they also usually have links to other webpages with verifying or extra data.
And the reason I picked this topic is because typically academic-types (read professors) hate it. This is slowly changing, and as everyone begins to see how well it's done over the last few years, more and more people are using it more often. In fact, I think that recently someone said that the New York Times actually quoted it as a source in one of their articles. So this is one of those volatile issues in the academic world, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Plus, before I picked it, and actually what made me think of it, was the fact that the professors here with us are split down the middle on whether they like it or not. So this should be fun.
I start my research on that today, with an outline due thursday, and the final paper due probably around finals week (2 1/2 weeks).
Then there's our corners project, for architecture, which I've talked about before. And there's also this project that the professor calls "From the Formal to the Social." In this we have to pick a process or an object, and fully document it and its uses around the city. He wants to make sure we focus on everything about our topic, from XS to XL. So for example, on project might be the trash removal system here, called BCNeta. Or some people are doing graffiti. We're doing public sitting places. So you have to look at everything, including construction material, measurements, ease of use, placement within the city, how it affects traffic flow, how it affects views and monuments, yadda yadda yadda. Everything from the smallest material thing about it to the largest most general way it affects the city or patterns within the city. That one just started today, so that should be interesting to see how that one goes.
Then there's the public spaces project. Each group of 3 people gets a district of the city, and has to come up with a categorization of the public spaces within that region, then pick on category and fully document it within the region. It's an interesting thing to focus on, because Barcelona has so many public spaces everywhere. It draws attention to the differences between how cities and societies function. In the late afternoon, everyone in Barcelona comes out into their local square or park, and it just becomes this amazing transformation. Some squares turn into psuedo daycares/playgrounds, where kids just take over the square and the parents completely let them go and pay attention to whatever else it is. Sabir was sitting and watching and he said he saw one woman come and just drop her kid off in the square, leave for 2 hours doing shopping, then come back with arm fulls of stuff, grab her kid and head home. In other squares all the surrounding shops and cafe's push chairs outside and form a perimeter of outside dining. And in all of them the age range goes from 2 months to 100 years. It's pretty cool. Sabir sometimes calls the parks and squares things like outdoor living rooms. It's an interesting concept.
We also have what's called a "Passages" project. The concept here is that throughout the day, each person in a city traces a passage through the city. Each of these passages may have their lulls and peaks of activity, and they all cross each other thousands of times a day. It is the aggregate of all of these passages that makes up city life. Which is a pretty cool way to think about it. So we have to create, document, and re-present our own passage of the city. It is a four hour long cut into the city life, a kind of cross-section of the Barcelona hustle and bustle. And the idea is that on the way we create some form of little "disturbance" and then observe the ripples. And the ripples should be made in possibly more than one way, so that we have multiple tracks through which to observe what is going on. It's got more of an artistic focus than a scientific or research one. And it's really cool.
Past projects have included things like asking directions to a specific place, then having the person draw the directions for you. That creates a set of drawings that show how people's mental maps of the city differ. Or another past project included sitting on the metro from the beginning of one line to its end, and taking a picture of the seat opposite you (they face each other) at every stop, then lining all the pictures up with the inner monologue of the picture taker.
I think mine is going to be standing in Plaza Catalunya, the biggest and busiest plaza right at the heart of the city, holding a sign that says "Free Hugs." I'll have someone else taking pictures of everyone that comes up to get a hug. Definitely gonna be interesting to see how that goes.
Then I think there might also be papers in each of the architecture classes, but the rumor is that he has always cancelled one project every year. So we'll see how those go.
Ok, well that's about it. I just picked up my backpack from Kylie. Looks like a winner. Can't wait to get to Interlaken.
Catch up with you guys soon!
-K3
For my Computing and Society class, we have to write a position paper on some topic that sounds relevant to the class. This just means we have to pick a side and argue it. My topic is going to be argueing for the accuracy and validity of Wikipedia. For those of you that have never used or heard of it, Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia with a catch: it is editable by anyone. While this sounds like it would be a horrible concept just asking for trouble, so far it has enjoyed enormous success. It has articles on nearly everything you can think of, and the vast majority of the time they are very accurate. It also enjoys some perks that normal encyclopedias don't, like for example the rapidity with which a new article will be put up when a new topic comes out. You can read about anything from political issues to marine biology to artificial intelligence. In fact, I frequent just type in topics from my textbooks and read them on Wikipedia instead of from the textbook because they are much more well-written and enjoyable. And they also usually have links to other webpages with verifying or extra data.
And the reason I picked this topic is because typically academic-types (read professors) hate it. This is slowly changing, and as everyone begins to see how well it's done over the last few years, more and more people are using it more often. In fact, I think that recently someone said that the New York Times actually quoted it as a source in one of their articles. So this is one of those volatile issues in the academic world, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Plus, before I picked it, and actually what made me think of it, was the fact that the professors here with us are split down the middle on whether they like it or not. So this should be fun.
I start my research on that today, with an outline due thursday, and the final paper due probably around finals week (2 1/2 weeks).
Then there's our corners project, for architecture, which I've talked about before. And there's also this project that the professor calls "From the Formal to the Social." In this we have to pick a process or an object, and fully document it and its uses around the city. He wants to make sure we focus on everything about our topic, from XS to XL. So for example, on project might be the trash removal system here, called BCNeta. Or some people are doing graffiti. We're doing public sitting places. So you have to look at everything, including construction material, measurements, ease of use, placement within the city, how it affects traffic flow, how it affects views and monuments, yadda yadda yadda. Everything from the smallest material thing about it to the largest most general way it affects the city or patterns within the city. That one just started today, so that should be interesting to see how that one goes.
Then there's the public spaces project. Each group of 3 people gets a district of the city, and has to come up with a categorization of the public spaces within that region, then pick on category and fully document it within the region. It's an interesting thing to focus on, because Barcelona has so many public spaces everywhere. It draws attention to the differences between how cities and societies function. In the late afternoon, everyone in Barcelona comes out into their local square or park, and it just becomes this amazing transformation. Some squares turn into psuedo daycares/playgrounds, where kids just take over the square and the parents completely let them go and pay attention to whatever else it is. Sabir was sitting and watching and he said he saw one woman come and just drop her kid off in the square, leave for 2 hours doing shopping, then come back with arm fulls of stuff, grab her kid and head home. In other squares all the surrounding shops and cafe's push chairs outside and form a perimeter of outside dining. And in all of them the age range goes from 2 months to 100 years. It's pretty cool. Sabir sometimes calls the parks and squares things like outdoor living rooms. It's an interesting concept.
We also have what's called a "Passages" project. The concept here is that throughout the day, each person in a city traces a passage through the city. Each of these passages may have their lulls and peaks of activity, and they all cross each other thousands of times a day. It is the aggregate of all of these passages that makes up city life. Which is a pretty cool way to think about it. So we have to create, document, and re-present our own passage of the city. It is a four hour long cut into the city life, a kind of cross-section of the Barcelona hustle and bustle. And the idea is that on the way we create some form of little "disturbance" and then observe the ripples. And the ripples should be made in possibly more than one way, so that we have multiple tracks through which to observe what is going on. It's got more of an artistic focus than a scientific or research one. And it's really cool.
Past projects have included things like asking directions to a specific place, then having the person draw the directions for you. That creates a set of drawings that show how people's mental maps of the city differ. Or another past project included sitting on the metro from the beginning of one line to its end, and taking a picture of the seat opposite you (they face each other) at every stop, then lining all the pictures up with the inner monologue of the picture taker.
I think mine is going to be standing in Plaza Catalunya, the biggest and busiest plaza right at the heart of the city, holding a sign that says "Free Hugs." I'll have someone else taking pictures of everyone that comes up to get a hug. Definitely gonna be interesting to see how that goes.
Then I think there might also be papers in each of the architecture classes, but the rumor is that he has always cancelled one project every year. So we'll see how those go.
Ok, well that's about it. I just picked up my backpack from Kylie. Looks like a winner. Can't wait to get to Interlaken.
Catch up with you guys soon!
-K3
Monday, June 18, 2007
Ramping up for the next trip ...and studying.
So! Been back in Barcelona for just over a week now. Things have been pretty chill here--focusing mostly on schoolwork, planning the next week of travel. But we still go out on the weekends, of course. ;)
My flights for my next week of travel are officially booked. I leave Friday morning for Paris, Tuesday morning for Interlaken, and Thursday night for Amsterdam. Hostels still aren't booked, and we need to buy a tent for camping in Interlaken. Just got word from a friend that she'll sell me her hiking backpack for 35€, which is awesome. That is going to save me a lot of time and money, since I won't have to go out searching for one. And a new one would probably have been 50€ min. But I really need to get one. I borrowed Zach's duffle bag for the last week of travel, and carrying that thing around between all the train stops and bus stops and hostels got old reallllly fast. Plus we'll be camping out at Interlaken, instead of getting a hostel. We'd rather be spending our money on all the extreme sports they have there.
I am SO excited about Interlaken. I definitely feel that it is going to be the main highlight of this next week of travel, much the same way that Cinque Terre was the highlight of the last trip. Except this time we're spending 3 full days there instead of just 1. For just a general idea of all the sporting and adventure they have at Interlaken, take a glance at this website:
Interlaken--Sport and Adventure
I know the main agenda for some people is skydiving, bungee jumping, and hang gliding. But since I've already done skydiving, and it is the most expensive activity, I might skip it this time. Though the thought of skydiving over the Swiss Alps is kind of enticing, to say the least. Lol.
I think my top three activities will probably bungee jumping, canyoning, and something else... maybe zorbing? How awesome would that be? Being rolled down a hill in a giant ball. And then of course the best part is that you get the title of Zorbanaut. And who wouldn't want to be a Zorbanaut?? So we'll see how that goes.
Applied for another student loan, to cover the cost of the rest of this trip and the fall. And it's going to be worth every penny of interest. Travelling like this has been absolutely amazing. And it sounds like we might get a little bit of time during finals week to travel as well. Our flight leaves on the 22nd, which is a Sunday, and most of our finals should be done by the previous Tuesday. So if that works out then I'm definitely going to Haldstat, and maybe Prague.
It's difficult to get people onboard for Haldstat, cause no one has ever heard of it, but now that a few of them have been to Cinque Terre, I'm pitching it as the other place that came as highly recommended as Cinque Terre. So that's getting their attention. Lol. I think I'll have at least one other person to go with me. Which will be fine.
Schoolwork is going pretty good as well. I'm definitely glad I dropped the User Interface class. Just 9 hours is plenty of work. On Saturday me and my two group mates spent 6 hours each taking pictures of intersections for our corners project in architecture. By the end of the project, the entire class will have photographically documented and then analyzed EVERY chamfered corner in the entire city of Barcelona. Everyone suspects that Sabir (the professor) is then going to use this for further research, either of his own or for his grad students. Which is probably true, but that's still cool. It's actually a project of really impressive scope. And Barcelona is, I think, the only city in the world with this style of cut off corner, so it's significant to architecture people to analyze exactly how that worked out for them. So I mean that's cool. I'm always up for some good research.
And speaking of which--my flight to Vancouver is now booked! Vancouver is where the AAAI conference is being held. Last semester, I had a severe case of right place right time. I happened to be sitting in the lab when one of the phd students went in to tell Charles (my research professor) that he didn't think they were going to be able to finish their research in time for the AAAI deadline. As a sidenote, AAAI is now pretty much THE premier conference on Artificial Intelligence. So he's telling Charles that they need help meeting the deadline, but all the other students in that lab are trying to meet deadlines of their own. And I'm literally sitting right outside of Charles' office. So he goes, "Just get Kenny to help you." Bam. Done. So I sit down with them, talk over what they're doing and what needs to get done, and I end up coding a bunch of the distance metrics for them.
And here's the deal with distance metrics. The AI that they are working on is about generating good stories (for things like video games). The author would create what is called a "story space," which is a web of story plot points. Each plot point can lead you to some number of other plot points, and a path through this space ends up being a story. Imagine it kind of like the choose your own adventure novels. So their technology involves finding a way to get the computer to choose good stories every time, but different stories every time. This way you could play a game, and get a good, but unique story every time you play it. Cool eh?
So my part in this was coding the distance metrics. And what these are, is a way to compare stories. Because stories are a series of plot points (or something analogous), how do you say when two stories are alike? Is it if they have the same ending? Or is it if they have all the same story up until the very end? Or is it something subtler, like how many plot points they have that are the same? So I wrote up a series of different distance metrics, and these were used to analyze in different ways how similar the generated stories were.
AND *drumroll please* the paper got accepted! Not only did it get accepted, but of our three reviewers, one gave us a recommendation for best paper. And we got a poster session. Poster sessions are where you print up a big poster of all your info, then stand beside it while everyone walks around. At this conference they are only given to highly technically difficult papers, or outstanding papers. And we got one!
So now I'm published. Third author on a paper at an AI conference. As an undergrad. Woo woo!
The flight from Vancouver leaves about 3 hours after I land in ATL, so I'll just stay in the airport, keep my luggage and turn right back around and get on a plane. Gonna be a long day of travel, but worth it.
Ok, well class is about to start, so I gotta run. Will post again soon. Always so much to say.
Love you guys!
My flights for my next week of travel are officially booked. I leave Friday morning for Paris, Tuesday morning for Interlaken, and Thursday night for Amsterdam. Hostels still aren't booked, and we need to buy a tent for camping in Interlaken. Just got word from a friend that she'll sell me her hiking backpack for 35€, which is awesome. That is going to save me a lot of time and money, since I won't have to go out searching for one. And a new one would probably have been 50€ min. But I really need to get one. I borrowed Zach's duffle bag for the last week of travel, and carrying that thing around between all the train stops and bus stops and hostels got old reallllly fast. Plus we'll be camping out at Interlaken, instead of getting a hostel. We'd rather be spending our money on all the extreme sports they have there.
I am SO excited about Interlaken. I definitely feel that it is going to be the main highlight of this next week of travel, much the same way that Cinque Terre was the highlight of the last trip. Except this time we're spending 3 full days there instead of just 1. For just a general idea of all the sporting and adventure they have at Interlaken, take a glance at this website:
Interlaken--Sport and Adventure
I know the main agenda for some people is skydiving, bungee jumping, and hang gliding. But since I've already done skydiving, and it is the most expensive activity, I might skip it this time. Though the thought of skydiving over the Swiss Alps is kind of enticing, to say the least. Lol.
I think my top three activities will probably bungee jumping, canyoning, and something else... maybe zorbing? How awesome would that be? Being rolled down a hill in a giant ball. And then of course the best part is that you get the title of Zorbanaut. And who wouldn't want to be a Zorbanaut?? So we'll see how that goes.
Applied for another student loan, to cover the cost of the rest of this trip and the fall. And it's going to be worth every penny of interest. Travelling like this has been absolutely amazing. And it sounds like we might get a little bit of time during finals week to travel as well. Our flight leaves on the 22nd, which is a Sunday, and most of our finals should be done by the previous Tuesday. So if that works out then I'm definitely going to Haldstat, and maybe Prague.
It's difficult to get people onboard for Haldstat, cause no one has ever heard of it, but now that a few of them have been to Cinque Terre, I'm pitching it as the other place that came as highly recommended as Cinque Terre. So that's getting their attention. Lol. I think I'll have at least one other person to go with me. Which will be fine.
Schoolwork is going pretty good as well. I'm definitely glad I dropped the User Interface class. Just 9 hours is plenty of work. On Saturday me and my two group mates spent 6 hours each taking pictures of intersections for our corners project in architecture. By the end of the project, the entire class will have photographically documented and then analyzed EVERY chamfered corner in the entire city of Barcelona. Everyone suspects that Sabir (the professor) is then going to use this for further research, either of his own or for his grad students. Which is probably true, but that's still cool. It's actually a project of really impressive scope. And Barcelona is, I think, the only city in the world with this style of cut off corner, so it's significant to architecture people to analyze exactly how that worked out for them. So I mean that's cool. I'm always up for some good research.
And speaking of which--my flight to Vancouver is now booked! Vancouver is where the AAAI conference is being held. Last semester, I had a severe case of right place right time. I happened to be sitting in the lab when one of the phd students went in to tell Charles (my research professor) that he didn't think they were going to be able to finish their research in time for the AAAI deadline. As a sidenote, AAAI is now pretty much THE premier conference on Artificial Intelligence. So he's telling Charles that they need help meeting the deadline, but all the other students in that lab are trying to meet deadlines of their own. And I'm literally sitting right outside of Charles' office. So he goes, "Just get Kenny to help you." Bam. Done. So I sit down with them, talk over what they're doing and what needs to get done, and I end up coding a bunch of the distance metrics for them.
And here's the deal with distance metrics. The AI that they are working on is about generating good stories (for things like video games). The author would create what is called a "story space," which is a web of story plot points. Each plot point can lead you to some number of other plot points, and a path through this space ends up being a story. Imagine it kind of like the choose your own adventure novels. So their technology involves finding a way to get the computer to choose good stories every time, but different stories every time. This way you could play a game, and get a good, but unique story every time you play it. Cool eh?
So my part in this was coding the distance metrics. And what these are, is a way to compare stories. Because stories are a series of plot points (or something analogous), how do you say when two stories are alike? Is it if they have the same ending? Or is it if they have all the same story up until the very end? Or is it something subtler, like how many plot points they have that are the same? So I wrote up a series of different distance metrics, and these were used to analyze in different ways how similar the generated stories were.
AND *drumroll please* the paper got accepted! Not only did it get accepted, but of our three reviewers, one gave us a recommendation for best paper. And we got a poster session. Poster sessions are where you print up a big poster of all your info, then stand beside it while everyone walks around. At this conference they are only given to highly technically difficult papers, or outstanding papers. And we got one!
So now I'm published. Third author on a paper at an AI conference. As an undergrad. Woo woo!
The flight from Vancouver leaves about 3 hours after I land in ATL, so I'll just stay in the airport, keep my luggage and turn right back around and get on a plane. Gonna be a long day of travel, but worth it.
Ok, well class is about to start, so I gotta run. Will post again soon. Always so much to say.
Love you guys!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Back In Barcelona
Whoo! So I got back into Barcelona last night around 11:30. I was exhausted, and just took a shower and fell asleep.
So the second day in Florence was pretty light. Mainly just chilled out and tried to recuperate a little, and the train left that night for Venice. We get into Venice at about 11:30pm, and it appears that no one really checked to see where our hostel was that we were staying at. So 12 people are all bumbling around trying to figure out what's going on, and it's just a mess. Luckily we at least know that we have to take a bus there, so we're only bumbling around the bus station, instead of the entire city (which is a complete maze, btw). We finally find a native who speaks english and knows where it is we are trying to go. The place was called Camp Fusina, and was an entire camping village. Pretty cool, except that you could only get there by bus or ferry, which really ended up messing with our nightlife in Venice. Or provided us with really good stories about how we got back, depending on how you look at it. Lol.
But Venice was beautiful. The architectural influences there seemed to be a mix of the standard ancient Roman style, and Arabic. You got all of your arches and columns and field repetition on the building facades, but then you had things like the gondolas, which have really cool curves and looked very Arabic (as far as I could tell anyways). The street of Venice make absolutely no sense at all, but are still very pretty to walk down. It tends to be kind of a tight feeling with all the buildings around you and the small streets, so you constantly feel almost cradled by the city, like its kind of hugging you (or looming over you, if it's night).
We did less of the standard fare tourist sites in Venice, cause we were starting to get worn out on them by this time. But we did have to see the giant plaza with the Basillica. For those of you who have seen the movie, "The Italian Job," this is the square at the beginning of the movie where Frank calls his daughter from when he wakes her up. Also the place where he's talking to Charlie and uses the line: "See those pillars over there? That's where they used to string up thieves who felt fine." Saw those pillars. They're pretty cool actually. And Venice looks exactly like it did in the Italian Job, too. That was pretty cool to see.
So we got to the square and just chilled out for a little bit. A couple of guys in the group had a thing for Cuban cigars, and there was a place selling them on the edge of the square, so we all got Romeo and Juliets and sat on the steps of the Piazza San Marco and just enjoyed the view.
Then we played with the pigeons.
In Piazza San Marco, there are pigeons everywhere. And they're not shy, either. There are little vendors in the square that sell corn to feed the pigeons with, and if you hold out a handful of corn, they will fly right up to your arm and fight each other on your hand for the corn. Definitely pretty entertaining. So of course we did things like put pigeons on people's heads, catch a pigeon, make them stick their heads way down into the bag to get the corn, etc etc.
Then we had to take the obligatory gondola ride. Luckily we had a pretty talkative gondolier, so we completely grilled him with questions about what it's like being a gondolier. He was a very cool guy. It turns out that the gondoliers (at least the ones we went through), work for a single company, but they own their gondolas. And how much does it cost to buy a new gondola, you ask? Just take a random guess. Turns out that a new gondola costs about 50,000 euro, which is somewhere in the range of $70,000. Whoa. He had been a gondolier for 22 years, starting when he was 23.
And what does it take to drive a gondola? Well if you're in the Grand Canal, where there's plenty of space, you can learn it in about 6 months or so. He made the analogy to driving a car. But to be a gondolier for this company, it takes years of work to get that good. His analogy was that anyone can drive a car, but not many people can drive Formula 1. So they're the Formula 1 of gondoliers. And it was pretty apparant. At the beginning of our tour, he was on his cell phone with one hand, and steering the gondola with the other. And I'm not talking down a nice straight canal. It was a tight fit and he made the turns with no problems at all. At other points, there were turns where the front of the gondola was inches from a wall, while the side of the gondola was inches from a corner. It was definitely some impressive manuevering.
At one point one of the girls asked him to sing for us, but he said he only sings in the shower and while making love. So her retort was, "So you've never made love in your gondola?" Lol. It didn't phase him a bit. He said that he had, and that it's very romantic being on the water in a gondola. Lol. He was a great guide. Also turns out he spoke 4 languages, had biceps about the size of my head, and looked maybe 30 when he was 45.
So after gondola-ing, we just kinda shopped around Venice. Or window shopped, at least. The two things that are everywhere in Venice are masks, and blown glass. I'm not sure what the deal is with the masks. I'm talking like super-ornate, masquerade ball type of masks. All amazingly beautiful. I kinda wish I had bought one now, but travelling with it would have been very difficult.
So our first night in Venice we stayed at the hostel, which has it's own bar, that was an absolute crazy mess. Imagine a bunch of young people travelling around, and all of them have a bar just to themselves. That's pretty much what it was like. So we figured we weren't drunk enough to be bumped into every 5 seconds, so we got our drinks and headed out to the playground. We definitely found the swings and had the swing-long-jump contest, like you used to in 3rd grade. I won (and the crowd goes wild). Lol. Then someone ran us off cause we were being too loud, and just before we went back to our rooms, we saw all the bartenders hanging out, cause the bar had closed a little bit before. And these bartenders don't just hang out. One of the girls was spinning fire on chains. You may have seen something like this with silk ropes with weights on the end of them, where they dance around and spin them in really cool patterns. Except these were metal chains, with kerosene soaked sponges on the ends of them. So she was dancing around with two fireballs flying around her. It definitely goes on the list of coolest things I've seen a person do.
So of course I had to try it. :-O
I only did it with one fireball instead of both of them, and that worked out pretty well. I think I managed to only hit myself once. But that really does no damage to you at all, cause the thing just hits you and bounces right off. You still have to be pretty careful with them, but it was damn fun. I did one for about 5 min, then tried two with both of them not lit, and managed to hit myself about 3 times in 1 min. Lol. Guess it's a good thing I didn't try two lit.
The next night we stayed with people in the Oxford study abroad program, which was out in Padova (Padua), a suburb of Venice. Then our last night was the night we decided we were going to go out in Venice. Apparantly Venice only has one dance club. I'm not sure if there were some kind of syntactic stipulations that made that only half-true, but everyone was saying that yes, this is Venice's only dance club. So the ferry stopped running before midnight, and the busses were a mess, so we definitely had to like get a taxi or something to get back. Everyone left the club at different times, and no one got back to the hostel before dawn, cause no one could figure out how to get there. It was pretty hysterical. I definitely didn't get any sleep that night. So the next day was our last in Venice. A lot of people had a train back to Rome, and then flew back from there, but I flew out that day from Venice, so I just hopped a bus to the airport (which I fell asleep in), chilled at the airport for a few hours (where I fell asleep about 5 times), and then chilled in my terminal, once they would let me (where I fell asleep and was awoken by a stewardess after everyone else had already boarded the plane). The plane took off, I fell asleep, I woke up, and the plane was landing in Barcelona. So it was a great flight. Lol.
Now I'm back here, cleaned up the room, did some laundry, and am ready for classes tomorrow. Woo woo! I can't believe I get to do this again in two weeks. I'm already looking forward to it. I'm probably going to do Interlaken, Oslo, and Amsterdam. Interlaken is a city that is home to many extreme sports, and a bunch of the guys are going there on the second trip. They've got sky-diving, bungee jumping, caving, rafting, hang-gliding, para-gliding, and maybe some other stuff. I'll probably be there for 3 days, and do bungee jumping, caving, rafting, and maybe hang gliding. I don't think I can afford the sky diving, since I've done it once already and it's the most expensive thing. Though sky diving over the Alps would be pretty awesome. So we'll see. Oslo has a music festival that is going on during our second week, and Amsterdam is Amsterdam. Plans are definitely open to interpretation, but this is the rough draft so far.
Talk to you guys soon. Love ya!
So the second day in Florence was pretty light. Mainly just chilled out and tried to recuperate a little, and the train left that night for Venice. We get into Venice at about 11:30pm, and it appears that no one really checked to see where our hostel was that we were staying at. So 12 people are all bumbling around trying to figure out what's going on, and it's just a mess. Luckily we at least know that we have to take a bus there, so we're only bumbling around the bus station, instead of the entire city (which is a complete maze, btw). We finally find a native who speaks english and knows where it is we are trying to go. The place was called Camp Fusina, and was an entire camping village. Pretty cool, except that you could only get there by bus or ferry, which really ended up messing with our nightlife in Venice. Or provided us with really good stories about how we got back, depending on how you look at it. Lol.
But Venice was beautiful. The architectural influences there seemed to be a mix of the standard ancient Roman style, and Arabic. You got all of your arches and columns and field repetition on the building facades, but then you had things like the gondolas, which have really cool curves and looked very Arabic (as far as I could tell anyways). The street of Venice make absolutely no sense at all, but are still very pretty to walk down. It tends to be kind of a tight feeling with all the buildings around you and the small streets, so you constantly feel almost cradled by the city, like its kind of hugging you (or looming over you, if it's night).
We did less of the standard fare tourist sites in Venice, cause we were starting to get worn out on them by this time. But we did have to see the giant plaza with the Basillica. For those of you who have seen the movie, "The Italian Job," this is the square at the beginning of the movie where Frank calls his daughter from when he wakes her up. Also the place where he's talking to Charlie and uses the line: "See those pillars over there? That's where they used to string up thieves who felt fine." Saw those pillars. They're pretty cool actually. And Venice looks exactly like it did in the Italian Job, too. That was pretty cool to see.
So we got to the square and just chilled out for a little bit. A couple of guys in the group had a thing for Cuban cigars, and there was a place selling them on the edge of the square, so we all got Romeo and Juliets and sat on the steps of the Piazza San Marco and just enjoyed the view.
Then we played with the pigeons.
In Piazza San Marco, there are pigeons everywhere. And they're not shy, either. There are little vendors in the square that sell corn to feed the pigeons with, and if you hold out a handful of corn, they will fly right up to your arm and fight each other on your hand for the corn. Definitely pretty entertaining. So of course we did things like put pigeons on people's heads, catch a pigeon, make them stick their heads way down into the bag to get the corn, etc etc.
Then we had to take the obligatory gondola ride. Luckily we had a pretty talkative gondolier, so we completely grilled him with questions about what it's like being a gondolier. He was a very cool guy. It turns out that the gondoliers (at least the ones we went through), work for a single company, but they own their gondolas. And how much does it cost to buy a new gondola, you ask? Just take a random guess. Turns out that a new gondola costs about 50,000 euro, which is somewhere in the range of $70,000. Whoa. He had been a gondolier for 22 years, starting when he was 23.
And what does it take to drive a gondola? Well if you're in the Grand Canal, where there's plenty of space, you can learn it in about 6 months or so. He made the analogy to driving a car. But to be a gondolier for this company, it takes years of work to get that good. His analogy was that anyone can drive a car, but not many people can drive Formula 1. So they're the Formula 1 of gondoliers. And it was pretty apparant. At the beginning of our tour, he was on his cell phone with one hand, and steering the gondola with the other. And I'm not talking down a nice straight canal. It was a tight fit and he made the turns with no problems at all. At other points, there were turns where the front of the gondola was inches from a wall, while the side of the gondola was inches from a corner. It was definitely some impressive manuevering.
At one point one of the girls asked him to sing for us, but he said he only sings in the shower and while making love. So her retort was, "So you've never made love in your gondola?" Lol. It didn't phase him a bit. He said that he had, and that it's very romantic being on the water in a gondola. Lol. He was a great guide. Also turns out he spoke 4 languages, had biceps about the size of my head, and looked maybe 30 when he was 45.
So after gondola-ing, we just kinda shopped around Venice. Or window shopped, at least. The two things that are everywhere in Venice are masks, and blown glass. I'm not sure what the deal is with the masks. I'm talking like super-ornate, masquerade ball type of masks. All amazingly beautiful. I kinda wish I had bought one now, but travelling with it would have been very difficult.
So our first night in Venice we stayed at the hostel, which has it's own bar, that was an absolute crazy mess. Imagine a bunch of young people travelling around, and all of them have a bar just to themselves. That's pretty much what it was like. So we figured we weren't drunk enough to be bumped into every 5 seconds, so we got our drinks and headed out to the playground. We definitely found the swings and had the swing-long-jump contest, like you used to in 3rd grade. I won (and the crowd goes wild). Lol. Then someone ran us off cause we were being too loud, and just before we went back to our rooms, we saw all the bartenders hanging out, cause the bar had closed a little bit before. And these bartenders don't just hang out. One of the girls was spinning fire on chains. You may have seen something like this with silk ropes with weights on the end of them, where they dance around and spin them in really cool patterns. Except these were metal chains, with kerosene soaked sponges on the ends of them. So she was dancing around with two fireballs flying around her. It definitely goes on the list of coolest things I've seen a person do.
So of course I had to try it. :-O
I only did it with one fireball instead of both of them, and that worked out pretty well. I think I managed to only hit myself once. But that really does no damage to you at all, cause the thing just hits you and bounces right off. You still have to be pretty careful with them, but it was damn fun. I did one for about 5 min, then tried two with both of them not lit, and managed to hit myself about 3 times in 1 min. Lol. Guess it's a good thing I didn't try two lit.
The next night we stayed with people in the Oxford study abroad program, which was out in Padova (Padua), a suburb of Venice. Then our last night was the night we decided we were going to go out in Venice. Apparantly Venice only has one dance club. I'm not sure if there were some kind of syntactic stipulations that made that only half-true, but everyone was saying that yes, this is Venice's only dance club. So the ferry stopped running before midnight, and the busses were a mess, so we definitely had to like get a taxi or something to get back. Everyone left the club at different times, and no one got back to the hostel before dawn, cause no one could figure out how to get there. It was pretty hysterical. I definitely didn't get any sleep that night. So the next day was our last in Venice. A lot of people had a train back to Rome, and then flew back from there, but I flew out that day from Venice, so I just hopped a bus to the airport (which I fell asleep in), chilled at the airport for a few hours (where I fell asleep about 5 times), and then chilled in my terminal, once they would let me (where I fell asleep and was awoken by a stewardess after everyone else had already boarded the plane). The plane took off, I fell asleep, I woke up, and the plane was landing in Barcelona. So it was a great flight. Lol.
Now I'm back here, cleaned up the room, did some laundry, and am ready for classes tomorrow. Woo woo! I can't believe I get to do this again in two weeks. I'm already looking forward to it. I'm probably going to do Interlaken, Oslo, and Amsterdam. Interlaken is a city that is home to many extreme sports, and a bunch of the guys are going there on the second trip. They've got sky-diving, bungee jumping, caving, rafting, hang-gliding, para-gliding, and maybe some other stuff. I'll probably be there for 3 days, and do bungee jumping, caving, rafting, and maybe hang gliding. I don't think I can afford the sky diving, since I've done it once already and it's the most expensive thing. Though sky diving over the Alps would be pretty awesome. So we'll see. Oslo has a music festival that is going on during our second week, and Amsterdam is Amsterdam. Plans are definitely open to interpretation, but this is the rough draft so far.
Talk to you guys soon. Love ya!
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Italy -- Warning: Long Post
Sooo much has happened in the last few days. I am worn out, and my 10 days of break still aren't up yet. So here's the breakdown:
Spent a couple of days in Rome. I randomly ran into someone I knew from Tech in some small restaurant, and he invited me to go to the Vatican with them at 8am the next morning. So I figured I'd spend the day with him and his friends, since I hadn't seen him in a while. So we do the Vatican Museum, and at one point I'm looking at something and he tells me he will wait for me in the next room. Well he picked a next room that I didn't see, and I apparantly fast-tracked myself into the Sistene Chapel.
So I couldn't find him, finished up the museum by myself, then tried to back-track a couple of times to see if I could find any of the group. I ran into one of the girls that he was travelling with, so we went outside to wait for the rest of the group. 45 minutes, still no one comes out. So we move on to St. Peter's Basilica. Little did we know that while we were waiting outside for them, they were waiting just inside the exit for us. And they were worried about the one girl who got separated from the group, cause they thought she didn't have the address for the hostel they were in.
But we don't know any of this, and after we get out of St. Peter's and still haven't found them, we decide to just toodle around Rome for the day. We checked out a castle, scoped out Rome from the top and found all the landmarks on our map, then wandered back down, bought some stuff from street vendors, went and sat at the Vittorio Emanuel II monument, which is gorgeous, ate some gelato, and just had a generally awesome day. Then we eventually find out that the group has been waiting/looking for her for the last 5 hours. Didn't really mess up the day too much though, cause we found them and everything worked out. Went and got some really good dinner afterwards.
So that was my day with Casner. The next day the Tech group was all supposed to get up early and catch an early train to Cinque Terre. I'm the only one that gets up and moving on time (despite having been out late), and I wake everyone up, and we get to the station about an hour after we'd planned. Not too bad, I guess, considering it was a group of like 12 people trying to get ready in half an hour. So we start figuring out how the train rides are going to work out and how much time we'll have and so forth, and people start to get unruly. We had only wanted to spend one day in Cinque Terre (which is not enough by the way--I think you could spend forever there), but it turned out to be 8 hours round trip of travel, for what was looking like only 4-6 hours of time in Cinque Terre.
So most of the group is starting to punk out, but Kabir has been standing in line, just to save a place in case we want the tickets. So I turn around to find him and he's made it all the way up to the ticket counter, so I just hold up two fingers, and he gets us two tickets to CT. We decide that we'll just go, stay overnight, and come back in the morning. We enlist two more guys to join us, and the trip starts.
It was definitely the best trip so far. We go to CT, which is one of the most beautiful places ever, hike around for a little bit to see some of the views, then climb down the rocks and go swimming in the Mediterranean.
Then we decide we want to see the sun setting over the water. It's probably about 7p when we decide this, and sunset was probably around 9p. So we catch a train to the western-most town of the bunch, Monterosso. But it turns out that the beautiful view we had from every other town doesn't exist in the same way from Monterosso. It just so happens that there's a big mountain in the way of the sunset.
By this point we're at about T-90 minutes and counting to sunset. So we decide that since there are trails, we are going to hike up the mountain and watch our sunset anyways. We head out on what we think is the right trail, and after about 15 minutes run into an Italian guy (in Italy, go figure). We talk to him, and all point at the map and speak in our respective languages and after a few minutes of no one knowing what's going on, we figure out that we're pretty much hiking through his back yard. Whoops! Lol. So he kindly points us in the right direction, and we head back down to find the real trail-head. We find it, and its about 60 minutes to sunset. There's no way we're going to make it up that mountain before sunset, but we go at it anyways.
We run up the mountain for a little ways before completely wearing ourselves out with that, and then set a fast pace for the rest of the hike up. We stop twice, but keep the pace pretty quick. As it turns out, we managed to make it up the mountain in something like 45 minutes, dripping sweat and exhausted, just as the sun is beginning to touch the horizon. And to make it even more rewarding, there was some random building up on top of the mountain, as well as the ruins of an old Roman church. So we climb up the building, and have one of the most amazing views ever, above the trees, on top of a mountain above Cinque Terre. We watch the sun go down over the water, then turn around to find all the lights turning on in all of the 5 towns along the coast. It was absolutely beautiful. We hung out there for a little while enjoying the view, then headed back down in the quickly waning light. But not before climbing the ruins as well, of course. And getting pictures of it all.
So we get back down into Monterosso, and seek out food. Absolutely amazing meal. Then we go chill out right above the beach for a bit, and after a few minutes I look up and see a bright glowing dome. It looks like the gilded top of some building, but its just a little bit too far to the right, which means it would have had to have been over the water. And its a bright ruddy orange color. After looking at it for a minute, I realize it's rising, and it's the moon. So we watch a beautiful orange moon rise up over the water, after having watched a beautiful sunset that we worked so hard for, and then having a great meal. After the moon rises, we go find a bar, stay there till it closes around 1, and then get bottles of wine and just go chill on the beach. We fall asleep against the wall next to the beach, and that ends our day in Cinque Terre. We hadn't planned on getting any lodging anyways, since it was only one night and we were already paying for that night for a hotel in Rome.
The next day I'm alone in CT, cause the other guys went back early in order to have time to go see the Vatican. I hop a train back to Spezia, where I'll buy my ticket back to Rome, but I fall asleep on the way. I wake up to one of the ticket checkers on the train. I show him my CT pass (which allows unlimited between the cities for two days) and he asks where I'm going. I say Spezia, and he points backwards. I slept through the stop. He tells me to just get off at the next one and head back to Spezia. So I get off at the next stop, then decide it will work just as well to buy a ticket from there to Rome.
So I go into the station and buy my ticket, but since it's a smaller town, it has a one hour layover. In Pisa! Sweet! Leaning tower here I come! I get to Pisa, find a map, and power-walk across the city to go see the tower. Its pretty much a straight shot, and I get across the city, take a left, and within about 200 yards, the tower comes into view. It's a beautiful tower, and its right in front of a beautiful palace. But it's really just comical, because its such a beautiful structure, but totally tilted at a hysterical angle. I check it out for about 90 seconds, then head back across the city. I timed my walk over, and I'll just barely have enough time to get back and catch my train.
I'm checking my watch the entire way back, and I think I'm doing ok, till I realize the landmark I was marking for my destination was actually a piazza some ways still from the station. So I start running. I fly into the station and push my way to my platform, through I bunch of people that just got off a different train. Luckily my train is still on the platform. I literally get onto my train, stop to breathe, and after about 30 seconds my train starts pulling out of the station. I cut it that close. But I got to see Pisa! The rest of the train ride back to Rome was uneventful, except that I was dead tired and couldn't sleep cause it was uncomfortable.
We go to a Bengali festival that night, have some good Indian food, then decide to go out to this cool bar we heard about called Ice Bar. There's some arguing about what it's going to be and whether it's worth it, cause its a 15€ cover. Turns out it was totally worth it. The entire bar was made out of ice. You entered from the front door into the normal temperature, normal material foyer. Then they give everyone gloves and these heavy metallic looking ponchos that make everyone look like characters from Star Wars. Then you go through a climitization chamber, and bam, you're in an igloo. The temperature inside was 23F. And everything is ice. The walls, the benches, the bar top, the glasses. Everything. Was pretty much one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And they can only serve drinks with strong liquor, as beer and wine will freeze. LOL.
The next day we all set off for Florence, which is where I am now. We wander around a little bit, and end up walking down the most expensive street I think I've ever been on. It had stores from every high end designer name I think I've ever heard of, and then some. Gucci, Prada, Pucci, Tiffany's, etc etc etc. And all of the stores have their intimidatingly well-dressed doormen. In excellent Italian suits, of course. The Italian suit rocks, by the way. I don't think I'll ever get tired of pinstripes.
So we wander through that, then head off for the Duomo, which is the main cathedral of the town. It's absolutely amazing. Huge, with a facade that's completely made of marble. Absolutely ridiculous. We climb up to the top of the dome, 463 steps, and get an amazing view of the city. Everything is just insanely pretty. Mountains in the background, terra cotta roofs on everything, the occasional church dome sticking out above the other buildings. Awesome.
After the Duomo, we head to the Uffizzi, the museum with one of the largest and most famous collections of well-known Rennaissance art. Tons of marble sculptures and paintings. Got to see the "Birth of Venus" as well as another really famous one thats titled something about Venus laying nude. Leave there and skip going to see the statue of David, cause the line is over 4 hours long, just for that one statue, and we're only here for a day and a half. Get dinner, go out, have a generally excellent time.
And now it's today. Whoo! Holy cow, I definitely have not slept enough in the past few days, and we have been going non-stop. I know this is a ridiculously long post, but it's the best I could do.
I miss seeing familiar faces, but I guess its a tradeoff for seeing some of the craziest sites in the world. Getting kind of tired of this clique that I'm travelling with, since I've been around them 24 hours a day for the past few days. But I most certainly can't complain.
Miss you all and love you! I head to Venice tonight. Talk to you later! Carli, let me know if you're gonna be able to make it out for my next week break.
Ciao!!
Spent a couple of days in Rome. I randomly ran into someone I knew from Tech in some small restaurant, and he invited me to go to the Vatican with them at 8am the next morning. So I figured I'd spend the day with him and his friends, since I hadn't seen him in a while. So we do the Vatican Museum, and at one point I'm looking at something and he tells me he will wait for me in the next room. Well he picked a next room that I didn't see, and I apparantly fast-tracked myself into the Sistene Chapel.
So I couldn't find him, finished up the museum by myself, then tried to back-track a couple of times to see if I could find any of the group. I ran into one of the girls that he was travelling with, so we went outside to wait for the rest of the group. 45 minutes, still no one comes out. So we move on to St. Peter's Basilica. Little did we know that while we were waiting outside for them, they were waiting just inside the exit for us. And they were worried about the one girl who got separated from the group, cause they thought she didn't have the address for the hostel they were in.
But we don't know any of this, and after we get out of St. Peter's and still haven't found them, we decide to just toodle around Rome for the day. We checked out a castle, scoped out Rome from the top and found all the landmarks on our map, then wandered back down, bought some stuff from street vendors, went and sat at the Vittorio Emanuel II monument, which is gorgeous, ate some gelato, and just had a generally awesome day. Then we eventually find out that the group has been waiting/looking for her for the last 5 hours. Didn't really mess up the day too much though, cause we found them and everything worked out. Went and got some really good dinner afterwards.
So that was my day with Casner. The next day the Tech group was all supposed to get up early and catch an early train to Cinque Terre. I'm the only one that gets up and moving on time (despite having been out late), and I wake everyone up, and we get to the station about an hour after we'd planned. Not too bad, I guess, considering it was a group of like 12 people trying to get ready in half an hour. So we start figuring out how the train rides are going to work out and how much time we'll have and so forth, and people start to get unruly. We had only wanted to spend one day in Cinque Terre (which is not enough by the way--I think you could spend forever there), but it turned out to be 8 hours round trip of travel, for what was looking like only 4-6 hours of time in Cinque Terre.
So most of the group is starting to punk out, but Kabir has been standing in line, just to save a place in case we want the tickets. So I turn around to find him and he's made it all the way up to the ticket counter, so I just hold up two fingers, and he gets us two tickets to CT. We decide that we'll just go, stay overnight, and come back in the morning. We enlist two more guys to join us, and the trip starts.
It was definitely the best trip so far. We go to CT, which is one of the most beautiful places ever, hike around for a little bit to see some of the views, then climb down the rocks and go swimming in the Mediterranean.
Then we decide we want to see the sun setting over the water. It's probably about 7p when we decide this, and sunset was probably around 9p. So we catch a train to the western-most town of the bunch, Monterosso. But it turns out that the beautiful view we had from every other town doesn't exist in the same way from Monterosso. It just so happens that there's a big mountain in the way of the sunset.
By this point we're at about T-90 minutes and counting to sunset. So we decide that since there are trails, we are going to hike up the mountain and watch our sunset anyways. We head out on what we think is the right trail, and after about 15 minutes run into an Italian guy (in Italy, go figure). We talk to him, and all point at the map and speak in our respective languages and after a few minutes of no one knowing what's going on, we figure out that we're pretty much hiking through his back yard. Whoops! Lol. So he kindly points us in the right direction, and we head back down to find the real trail-head. We find it, and its about 60 minutes to sunset. There's no way we're going to make it up that mountain before sunset, but we go at it anyways.
We run up the mountain for a little ways before completely wearing ourselves out with that, and then set a fast pace for the rest of the hike up. We stop twice, but keep the pace pretty quick. As it turns out, we managed to make it up the mountain in something like 45 minutes, dripping sweat and exhausted, just as the sun is beginning to touch the horizon. And to make it even more rewarding, there was some random building up on top of the mountain, as well as the ruins of an old Roman church. So we climb up the building, and have one of the most amazing views ever, above the trees, on top of a mountain above Cinque Terre. We watch the sun go down over the water, then turn around to find all the lights turning on in all of the 5 towns along the coast. It was absolutely beautiful. We hung out there for a little while enjoying the view, then headed back down in the quickly waning light. But not before climbing the ruins as well, of course. And getting pictures of it all.
So we get back down into Monterosso, and seek out food. Absolutely amazing meal. Then we go chill out right above the beach for a bit, and after a few minutes I look up and see a bright glowing dome. It looks like the gilded top of some building, but its just a little bit too far to the right, which means it would have had to have been over the water. And its a bright ruddy orange color. After looking at it for a minute, I realize it's rising, and it's the moon. So we watch a beautiful orange moon rise up over the water, after having watched a beautiful sunset that we worked so hard for, and then having a great meal. After the moon rises, we go find a bar, stay there till it closes around 1, and then get bottles of wine and just go chill on the beach. We fall asleep against the wall next to the beach, and that ends our day in Cinque Terre. We hadn't planned on getting any lodging anyways, since it was only one night and we were already paying for that night for a hotel in Rome.
The next day I'm alone in CT, cause the other guys went back early in order to have time to go see the Vatican. I hop a train back to Spezia, where I'll buy my ticket back to Rome, but I fall asleep on the way. I wake up to one of the ticket checkers on the train. I show him my CT pass (which allows unlimited between the cities for two days) and he asks where I'm going. I say Spezia, and he points backwards. I slept through the stop. He tells me to just get off at the next one and head back to Spezia. So I get off at the next stop, then decide it will work just as well to buy a ticket from there to Rome.
So I go into the station and buy my ticket, but since it's a smaller town, it has a one hour layover. In Pisa! Sweet! Leaning tower here I come! I get to Pisa, find a map, and power-walk across the city to go see the tower. Its pretty much a straight shot, and I get across the city, take a left, and within about 200 yards, the tower comes into view. It's a beautiful tower, and its right in front of a beautiful palace. But it's really just comical, because its such a beautiful structure, but totally tilted at a hysterical angle. I check it out for about 90 seconds, then head back across the city. I timed my walk over, and I'll just barely have enough time to get back and catch my train.
I'm checking my watch the entire way back, and I think I'm doing ok, till I realize the landmark I was marking for my destination was actually a piazza some ways still from the station. So I start running. I fly into the station and push my way to my platform, through I bunch of people that just got off a different train. Luckily my train is still on the platform. I literally get onto my train, stop to breathe, and after about 30 seconds my train starts pulling out of the station. I cut it that close. But I got to see Pisa! The rest of the train ride back to Rome was uneventful, except that I was dead tired and couldn't sleep cause it was uncomfortable.
We go to a Bengali festival that night, have some good Indian food, then decide to go out to this cool bar we heard about called Ice Bar. There's some arguing about what it's going to be and whether it's worth it, cause its a 15€ cover. Turns out it was totally worth it. The entire bar was made out of ice. You entered from the front door into the normal temperature, normal material foyer. Then they give everyone gloves and these heavy metallic looking ponchos that make everyone look like characters from Star Wars. Then you go through a climitization chamber, and bam, you're in an igloo. The temperature inside was 23F. And everything is ice. The walls, the benches, the bar top, the glasses. Everything. Was pretty much one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And they can only serve drinks with strong liquor, as beer and wine will freeze. LOL.
The next day we all set off for Florence, which is where I am now. We wander around a little bit, and end up walking down the most expensive street I think I've ever been on. It had stores from every high end designer name I think I've ever heard of, and then some. Gucci, Prada, Pucci, Tiffany's, etc etc etc. And all of the stores have their intimidatingly well-dressed doormen. In excellent Italian suits, of course. The Italian suit rocks, by the way. I don't think I'll ever get tired of pinstripes.
So we wander through that, then head off for the Duomo, which is the main cathedral of the town. It's absolutely amazing. Huge, with a facade that's completely made of marble. Absolutely ridiculous. We climb up to the top of the dome, 463 steps, and get an amazing view of the city. Everything is just insanely pretty. Mountains in the background, terra cotta roofs on everything, the occasional church dome sticking out above the other buildings. Awesome.
After the Duomo, we head to the Uffizzi, the museum with one of the largest and most famous collections of well-known Rennaissance art. Tons of marble sculptures and paintings. Got to see the "Birth of Venus" as well as another really famous one thats titled something about Venus laying nude. Leave there and skip going to see the statue of David, cause the line is over 4 hours long, just for that one statue, and we're only here for a day and a half. Get dinner, go out, have a generally excellent time.
And now it's today. Whoo! Holy cow, I definitely have not slept enough in the past few days, and we have been going non-stop. I know this is a ridiculously long post, but it's the best I could do.
I miss seeing familiar faces, but I guess its a tradeoff for seeing some of the craziest sites in the world. Getting kind of tired of this clique that I'm travelling with, since I've been around them 24 hours a day for the past few days. But I most certainly can't complain.
Miss you all and love you! I head to Venice tonight. Talk to you later! Carli, let me know if you're gonna be able to make it out for my next week break.
Ciao!!
Saturday, June 2, 2007
ROME!
Hey guys, Im in Rome now. This city is beautiful. Yesterday I randomly ran into Mike Casner in a restaurant, so I spent the day with him and his friends going around Rome and seeing the sites. Or at least I spent the day with one of his friends. The other ones were looking for us all day. Whoops.
The Vatican Museum is amazing. Saw the Sistene Chapel. Too many guards saying "SHH" the whole time. Prayed in St. Peters Basilica. Pretty awesome.
We are cramped for time right now. Just got done with laundry. Will post later.
Love yall!
The Vatican Museum is amazing. Saw the Sistene Chapel. Too many guards saying "SHH" the whole time. Prayed in St. Peters Basilica. Pretty awesome.
We are cramped for time right now. Just got done with laundry. Will post later.
Love yall!
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