Hooray for being in Italy! First reminder of what it's like being in this country: waiting for over an hour for our luggage to come out at the baggage claim at Naples Airport

Well, it looks like we picked the right time to visit Venice. As of this coming May, Venice will ban all wheeled suitcases.

Now that Christian's back, we could finally go about booking all our travel for the early fall. I am on sabbatical (woohoo!) and in September I have a conference in Tuscany for a week, then a week break, followed by a weeklong conference in Graz. After that, I was planning on staying in Graz for another 3 weeks or so to get a lot of research done ( Read more... )

I am in Ischia, an island off of Naples, Italy. It's wonderful. I'm at a group theory conference. I just got bit by a mosquito, which normally I would find annoying, but which I find kind of amazing considering the morning I left Connecticut, I was late for class because of heavy snow that had basically shut down I-95 during the morning commute. ( Read more... )

For those of you that missed it, Italy's judicial system made one of the most ludicrous rulings I have read in a long time.

Italy convicts 7 scientists for failing to warn about earthquake. They face 6 year prison terms.This, combined with that ruling a year ago that crucifixes hanging on the front of classrooms in public schools was NOT a state ( Read more... )

Lerici has a large castle on a bluff overlooking the bay. We walked up there and went inside, only to find it was not only a castle, but a dinosaur museum. Most of the fossils weren't even from Italy, and they had these silly plaster dinosaurs in a courtyard. I took a picture of me with my head in a raptor's jowls. But wait. Not only was this a ( Read more... )

Italy, Days 4-8 (Aug 25-30). Tellaro/Fiascherino/Lerici. Food in Fiascherino/Tellaro was a mixed bag. The first night we had a satisfying seafood meal on the rooftop terrace of our hotel. This restaurant was closed every other night we were there, so we ventured to some other restaurants in neighboring towns. Our best dinner experience was in ( Read more... )

I'm way overdue, but a backlogged entry finishing our Italy trip ( Read more... )

Our day in Genoa today, footstep by footstep:

map

Note, this is not taking into account Genoa's incredibly varied topology.

The next morning, we woke up early and had a good breakfast on the top floor of the hotel and then parted ways for the morning. Glor and Dan had a specific location to visit on request of their son and then they went to La Scala, the opera house. Christian and I went to the castle instead. The castle had a museum of prehistoric findings in the ( Read more... )