The weekend following the second formal dinner was our first long travel weekend, so 6 other girls and I decided to spend Saturday thru Monday in Palermo, Sicily. Fabio picked us up early Saturday morning to take us down to Marco Polo Airport outside of Venice. Our flight was supposed to leave at 9:10 but when we got to the airport we found out that our flight had been moved to 10:55 because it had been combined with a flight to another city in Sicily. We sat in the departures lounge for two hours, entertaining ourselves as best we could– taking pictures of each other, dancing to ipods, taking pictures of each other dancing to ipods… (more…)
Sicilian Adventure Friday, Dec 4 2009
Trips and Travels Agrigento, beach, Mondello Lido, Palermo, Sicily, trains, valle dei templi 2:38 pm
Formal Dinners Monday, Nov 23 2009
Around Campus Barbesin, business ettiquite, Fior, gourmet dinner, phi beta delta 10:13 pm
First Formal Dinner
In their quest to turn us into effective business leaders, CIMBA made us take a seminar on business etiquette and we get to practice our etiquette at 3 formal dinners throughout the semester. At these events we dress in our finest attire and get bussed to fancy restaurants for fantastic food and wine, and all of the professors come as well. Our first formal diner was at Hotel Fior in the next town over. This dinner had a delicious antipasto buffet and the best risotto I have ever had–it had pumpkin and black truffle! Dessert was delicious as well, they served us millefoglie and espresso. They also took our pictures for the yearbook. (more…)
Trieste Friday, Nov 20 2009
Around Campus and Trips and Travels Castles, Redipuglia, Trieste, WWI 5:42 pm
Miramare
The Saturday following the travel week we took a class field trip to Redipuglia, Miramare, and Trieste with European Cultural Studies class. It was cool to get off campus and see the surrounding area, I feel like every weekend we’ve been jetting of to other countries (and we pretty much have!). We boarded the bus early in the morning to go to Redipuglia where they have a huge WWI memorial and a small museum. The memorial has all the names of the soldiers who died, and I saw a lot of surnames that I recognized. I found a Battinelli as well, Catullo Battinelli. I don’t recognize the name but its cool nonetheless! I also found a Colosi and a few Conte’s among others. The view from the top was amazing as well.
The next stop on the trip was Castello di Miramare, a white castle right on the Adriatic Sea with beautiful gardens. This was also used as a headquarters for the US Army during the world wars. Had the best tiramisu ever in a little cafe in the gardens!
Castello Miramare
The last stop on our grand tour of Northeastern Italy was the city of Trieste itself. We were given time to run around and explore the city as long as we were back on the bus by a certain time. We were each given a map and the emergency cell phone number in case we got lost, and then we were off. The girls wanted to stop for Chinese food again (I feel like we’ve been eating that a lot) so instead of going with them I went exploring with some of the guys. After wandering aimlessly for a few minutes we decided to try to find the Castello S. Giusto in the center of the city. It was up on top of a big hill where we ran into a few more Cimbites. Kendall, Jeremy and I were the only ones willing to pay the 3.50 Euro to look around inside. It was pretty cool– the dungeon area downstairs was full of Roman antiques like statues and mosaics, while the upstairs was full of weapons like swords, pikes, and crossbows. It was pretty sweet.
View from Castello S. Giusto
Yes, we did make it back to the bus on time!
Here are all of my pictures from the trip. The second half is from our second formal dinner! Trieste and Barbesin
Vienna, City of Music Friday, Nov 20 2009
Trips and Travels 4:42 pm
Sorry for the delay! They’ve had us swamped with work for the past couple of weeks.
The last stop of the travel week was Vienna, Austria. A place where history is literally everywhere, as are concerts, operas, and ballets. (more…)
Stop 2 of the Travel Break: Prague Wednesday, Oct 21 2009
Trips and Travels Charles Bridge, Prague, Starbucks 1:06 pm
Me in the Old Town Square
We left Munich early on Tuesday morning for Prague, which is in the Czech Republic for those of you who are geographically challenged.
The train ride was super long– 8 hours, I believe. It took us pretty much the whole day to get there, and we arrived after dark. That was fun, trying to find the apartment in the dark and the rain in a city where the streets are designed for you to get lost! (No lie, our tour guide told us that the city was designed so that when Prague was invaded by enemy troops, the people would lock themselves in the buildings and the invaders would get lost in the streets!) (more…)
Dirndls and Lederhosen Friday, Oct 16 2009
Trips and Travels BMW, Dachau, Munich, Oktoberfest, Olympia Park 6:24 pm
Last week was our first full week of travel- that means no classes, no homework, no seminars or workshops for 9 whole days!
Oktoberfest
On Friday afternoon Jess, Mike, and I took the bus at 4:00 pm to Bassano, where the closest train station is, to get our rail passes validated and catch the train to Padova, only to find that the next train to Padova was actually a 2 hour bus ride. Our reason for going to Padova was that the overnight train to Munich was leaving from that station at 11:28 pm, but we figured we would go early to look around a little bit. I had not considered that most things would be closed at 6pm and that it would be too dark to really do any sightseeing. Plus, the area around the train station was not the nicest part of town. Actually, it reminded me a lot of Chinatown in New York. (more…)
Cinque Terre Monday, Oct 12 2009
Trips and Travels Cinque Terre, Hiking, jumping, swimming 9:42 am
Cinque Terre. The most relaxing weekend so far if you don’t count jumping off of 20 foot cliffs and hiking for 5 hours along the coast. Cinque Terre is a cluster of 5 towns on the Italian Rivera that are connected by a foot path called the Via dell’Amore. We stared off very early on Saturday morning, around 2 am, getting on a bus for a 5 hour ride to LaSpezia, where we were going to take the train into Riomaggiore, the town on the southern end of Cinque Terre. Now, we all had to sign an agreement beforehand that we would not eat or drink on the bus or, above all, show up drunk. If we did show up drunk, were told, we would not be allowed to board and we would not be refunded our money. Well sure enough, some kids just can’t go a night without hitting up the local bars. It wouldn’t have bothered everyone so much if the motion of the bus had not caused one of them to spew all over himself an hour and a half into the ride. (more…)
Interlaken: Canyoning and Such Wednesday, Sep 30 2009
Trips and Travels canyoning, Switzerland 1:47 pm
Finally! My post about canyoning. (more…)
The Exploding Whale Thursday, Sep 17 2009
Around Campus explosions, Kepner-Tregoe 12:27 pm
The past two days consisted of a snoozefest a problem-solving and decision-making workshop called Kepner-Tregoe, where they teach us how to appraise situations and find the best solutions to various problems. Yesterday we did some group stuff and looked (through our eyelids) at powerpoint slides and flipcharts, but today we looked as some very BAD decisions that have been made in the past and what potential problems the decision makers overlooked. Case in point: what do you do with a 45 foot, 8 ton dead whale when it washes up on the beach in Oregon?
Our task was to identify the potential problems associated with blowing a dead whale to smithereens. As if those are not apparently obvious.
Apparently the government of Florence, Oregon thought that the whale would vaporize– no lie, vaporize– and then the seagulls would eat whatever was left over. They did not anticipate pieces of smelly dead whale showering down on everything and everyone in a half-mile radius, or a huge piece of blubber smashing in the roof of a car a quarter of a mile away. Even after all that, there was still a huge piece of whale that remained unexploded. What a waste. They’ll just have to blow the rest of it up now, right?
Tomorrow we have the Da Vinci Challenge, aka the low ropes course, which is going to be so much fun! Pray for sun so we can have it outdoors– its been raining on and off all week. I’ll probably post again on Monday because right after the Da Vinci Challenge we hop on the bus for Interlaken, Swizerland, the extreme sports capital of the world! Many of us want to do canyoning, which involves hiking down streams and jumping off waterfalls. Sort of like the red-rock slides in Sedona. This is what it’s like:
Mt. Grappa Wednesday, Sep 16 2009
Around Campus and Trips and Travels Gelato, Hiking, Mt. Grappa 3:42 pm
On Sunday, ten of us decided we were going to hike up Mt. Grappa, the mountain I can see out of my window. Now, there is a bus that will take you to the base and all you have to do is hke up and back down again; but the guys in our little group thought that would be cheating so we were going to walk all the way there and back. (more…)
