Nice, France (10/31/2005)

Turns out this picture didn't make it on earlier, so I wanted to make sure it was there. Nice is wonderful and the view from the hill next to it is spectacular.

I love the fact that Italians like to take extra vacation days around holidays. Since Tuesday, All Saints Day, was a holiday for Italy, naturally, Italians took off Monday, Halloween, as well. Some even take off Friday and the following Wednesday just to get an extra long weekend. Naturally, Dave and I had to exploit the situation and take an over night trip to Nice, France. This is a great shot of the bay for the main tourist area of Nice from the hill next to the city. We ate well, walked a lot, and managed to get see all the highlights in less than 24 hours. Go us!

Me stuck in a tree like a little monkey. This is taken from on top of the hill over looking the harbor and bay of Nice, as you could probably guess that there weren't any trees like this along the water.

A close up of the rocky beach of Nice, France. The water is beautiful, but the sand, or lack of sand, sucks. Waves aren't really good for body surfing either, but I wasn't too interested in swimming on Halloween.

You see the water washing up over my feet? This is proof that I have officially been in the Mediterranean Sea! Too bad I didn't bring my suit to go swimming though.

Wow, that water is cold and the waves are getting my jeans wet. This is a nice action shot of me trying to scramble back up to dry land. Those rocks hurt my feet too.

Dave trying to get the perfect picture of the waves.

This is me looking puzzled while sitting on the beach. I'm not sure if this was taken before or after I went into the water.

The harbor of Nice. Look closely at the wall that outlines the harbor jutting into the Mediterranean Sea. See those big things that look like white rocks? Ok, remember those when looking at the next couple of pitcures.

Sail boat in the harbor, taken from onto of a big hill that we foolishly walked up. Though I will say this for us, we found the easy way up and took the stairs down.

Remember those rocks? This what they actually are, big conctrete blocks piled together in a strange arrangement. Hasn't anyone ever told you not to climb on dangerous concrete blocks along a harbor? Guess not, though the view was pretty.

View from those concrete blocks along the pier.

The other side of Nice, looking into the surrounding hills. But I really put this picture in because I wanted to show off my beautifully trimmed hair, the shortest it has ever been. I look like a skin head, but yet, I still kind of like it.

Canadian Bacon anyone? Here is a man proud of where he's from, though let's be honest, how often to you pass a Canadian flag in France?

Though Dave found his consulate in Nice, it turned out to be closed by the time we got there. He was still happy to stumble upon it, as you can obviously tell by his expression.

The skinniest building ever. I'm not sure if that's true, but it was still weird enough that I took a picture of it. Unfortunately for you viewers, this picture turned out alright, so here it is.

Genova (10/27/2005)

Genoa (or Genova in Italian) I went there with a group of 4 other ROSE School students to attend a lecture on structural vulnerability, and then spent the rest of the evening goofing off down at the water front. We met up with 2 other Fulbrights, Dryden and Brian who are doing research for their history PhD's in Genova, for dinner. After dinner, we ran to the train station to catch the last train leaving for Pavia, and fortunately, we made it too. It was a nice day. Genova is very beautiful and definitely worth a return trip.

These sculptures looked like windmill type things, but I'm not really sure. The picture came out nice, so I decided to put it up on my blog.

Roof cover thing of some sort. It looks like a public place, but we couldn't get inside it. Anyways, you can see it from just about everywhere along the water front, so I thought I would take a picture of it. I liked it too.

On the water front with the aquarium on the right and that strange roof thing on the left. The glass ball in the center was like a greenhouse of some sort. Very nice area.

Along the port in Genova, we found this big steel tube thing and decided that it would be a bunches of fun to try and fun up the sides of it and get our pictures in the progress. Needless to say, we managed to entertain ourselves for about 30 min doing this. Turns out the Giovanni here wins the prize for best picture for running up the wall. Congrats!

Dave took a shot at running up the side of the tube now. Actually, he took many tries, but we could never get as good of a shot as we did with Giovanni.

Now it was my turn to look like an idiot in the big tube thingy.

Great night shot by Dave. We still don't know what the hell that thing really is though.

I threw this pic from the train station in Pavia before we left for Genova in here because I have had special requests for more pics of me. I thought this one was ok.