Me and Marco at the Fulbright orientation. Odd pic I know.

More pics of me from the Fulbright orientation. On the left is Meaghan who will be studying in Palermo, in the center is John who will be in Rome, and of course me, who is still in Pavia.

Rome (10/9-10/14/05)

Rome. What a city. There is just way too much stuff here to see in a few days. So, I decided to spread the wealth and plan to return to the eternal city. That's me in the Domus Sessoriana hotel attached to the Santa Croce in Gerusalemme church. We had the sweetest room with probably over 40 stairs connecting different levels of it. My bed is up the stairs behind me and my bathroom is down the stairs behind me. The Fulbright orientation program was very cool, well, the everything but the lectures, I guess. Unfortunately I am relying on my other fellow Fulbrighters for pics for this website, seeing as how I only took some of Ostia Antica. For those pics, check out my photo album at YahooPhotos. Well, onto Rome!

Il Pantheon!!!!! I finally made it!!! Of all the historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc in all of Rome, this was the one I wanted to see the most. Thus, I took like 60 pictures of it. I know I'm a nerd.

An artistic picture of a sunspot through the oculus in the Pantheon. I had too much fun with photoshop I guess, but then again, I also had too much fun at this building too. Just think, it's the 3rd largest dome (depending upon your source) in all of Italy, and it was built by the Romans. Amazing, but way too crowded.

Another artistic picture of the oculus in the Pantheon. Again, only one out of about 60 or so.

Picture of a lion in a fountain in Piazza Navona. I thought this turned out pretty good, so it's up on the website. Unfortunately, many of my other pics that I thought would be good turned out to be crap, so they are not shown here.

The Colosseo (Colosseum). A most impressive sight, even at night. The way that it's lit is pretty cool and so I thought that I would take some pictures of it. What else am I going to do at night in Rome? Drink beer with a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis?

I unfortunately only have pictures of the Colosseum at night. Guess that means I'll have to go back to Rome at some point.

Me being a goofball at the Colosseum. I am actually leaning up against the wall of the Colosseum when I took this picture and you can't see it, but there are ants crawling in my ear from the wall. Weird stuff, I know

My favorite picture of the facade of San Pietro in Vatican City. This is easily the most impressive cathedral I have ever visited. I was even fortunate enough to attend a week day mass.

The only picture I took inside San Pietro because I thought that it was took pretty to do it justice. This picture still struck me as one I should take.

St. Peter, seen with the keys to the kingdom of heaven outside of San Pietro.

Me infront of a wall connecting San Pietro to Castel Sant'Angelo. I really would've liked to enter the Vatican City from inside this wall, but I don't think that would've gone over too well.

Me infront of a fountain in Piazza Novana. Now that I think of it, I'm lucky that the Italian taking this picture didn't run off with my camera. Guess it's a good thing I went to church that day.

Trajan's Column. The relief sculpture on this is really cool and it depicts a victory of sorts, but I can't remember the details.

Short Course Seminar on Historic Buildings (10/3-10/7/05)

Short course on Structural Assessment of Historical Buildings. So what does that mean? It means we attend all day lectures but also get to do some fun stuff like take field trips or ride on the new shake table in the EUCENTRE labs. I think this picture was taken right before the big jolt from the simulated earthquake.

We took a field trip for our short course on Structural Assessment of Historical Buildings yesterday to the Pavia Cathedral. The original designs for the cathedral were by Bramante, and there is a 8 m long wooden model of the original design for it in the Castel of Pavia. The restoration of it was really cool stuff, but since it probably wouldn't mean anything to most of the people reading this blog, I'll hold off on the details.

Picture of the dome of the Pavia Cathedral while under restoration

Pio does a disappearing trick while inside the Cathedral of Pavia

Cookout after our first final exam (9/30/05)

After the first class was finished, we decided that we needed to unwind and have a cook out, which basically means grilling lots of meat and drinking lots of beer. I guess there were enough foreigners, like myself, to make this a popular past time in Italy. From top leftr clockwise: me, Jason, Pio, and David.

My friend Jason when he unwinds. What a goof ball. We caught him smoking, or did we? If you look closely, you'll notice that he actually has a sausage link in his mouth rather than a cigar. Weird.

Lago di Como, the Day After My Birthday (9/24/05)

Trip to Lago di Como, more specifically, the towns of Varenna and Bellagio. We arrived in Varenna by train early in the morning and then caught a ferry over to Bellagio, which is a beautiful city on the penisola that juts into the center of the lake, and coincidentally is the town that the hotel in Las Vegas is named after. What a long day. We ate lunch in Bellagio, then walked around the city, got tired, ate some gelato on a park bench and talked with some old couples from the US on tour through Italy. Then we drank some coffee, tried to ride bikes through the hills surrounding the lake, which on only 4 hours of sleep was not a good idea. Finally, we left earlier than we had intended, had some ticket issues with an automatic ticket machine, transfered in Milan and ate a late dinner in Pavia. Lots of pics, so it was difficult to decide which ones to put up on the website. Enjoy, the day after my birthday.

Me at the top of Bellagio. What a day!

My friend David from Toronto. He agreed to go with me to Lago di Como the day after my birthday. He's the reason why we have so many good pics of me for this trip.

This is a pic from San Giovanni docking station, about 15 minute bike ride from Bellagio. This is as far as we got on bikes, because, as you can probably guess, all the roads are really hilly and we just couldn't take it. Guess I'm out of shape.

Me pretending to think on the boat prior to arriving in Bellagio from Varenna. If I had known that we would be walking as much as we did that day, I would have tried to go to bed before 3 am after celebrating my birthday. Oh well, what are you going to do?

Main drag of Bellagio with Lago di Como directly to the left of the trees. This is a beautiful town. About the only resemblance to the hotel in Las Vegas is that everything is very expensive.

One of the many stairs in the city of Bellagio. I swear, there is only one flat road in the entire city and that is the one along the water.

Bellagio from the water. This is a beautiful little turist town, which means you can order 2 cappucinos in a row and they won't give you a dirty look, of course they will charge you double for each of them.

Me with Varenna in the background

Varenna from the water. David did a nice job of touching up this pic

Mountain across the water from Bellagio. If you look closely, you should be able to see a bird, a plane, and a church up on the mountain.

Another boat on the water

Me without my glasses on the boat from Bellagio. I decided that it might be nice to actually see my eyes for once.

Sunset on Lago di Como

Sunest on Lago di Como

Train station at Varenna (Lago di Como). There are tunnels on either side of the station only wide enough for one train to fit through at a time. As you can see, even the station is beautiful.

Happy 23rd Birthday (9/23/05)

Happy Birthday to me!!! 23 years old. Go figure. I had a really good brithday too. A bunch of people at the ROSE School threw me a little party with a cake and everything. Of course the cake didn't taste anything like an American b-day cake, but it was still really good.

Give a bunch of engineers a map and we'll entertain ourselves for hours.

Later at the Irish Pub in the center of Pavia, a few of us closed down the bar to celebrate my 23rd birthday. Let's see, from the left: Jason, Isabell, Alexander, Me, Joao. It was a blast. 2 Americans and 3 Portuguese. We spent most of the night trying to learn how to say different words in Portuguese, which we of course butchered. They made fun of us for it and it was a blast. The beer was pretty good too.

Me and Joao at the Irish Pub

I can't remember what they were doing in this one, but it was still pretty funny, so I'll post it anyways.

After we closed the bar around 2:30 am, we decided that it was a good idea to ride our bikes back to our dorm. We may not have thought that one all the way through, but we made it back ok.