Weekend in Italy

Slowly chalking up European countries. Actually considering I'm been here three months and I've already been to Slovenia, Germany (for a day), and now Italy, I'm not doing too bad. I figure I've got three years so I can afford to take my time.

This trip has been in the works for about a month and a half, but didn't really come together until two weeks ago as my MSc supervisor, found out that he didn't end up getting permits from the NWT in time for research this month, and decided to come to Italy to give a talk at a university in Milan and see a stage of the Giro D'Italia.

Since I am somewhat constrained by conducting weekly field visits (hiking in the Swiss Alps is such a drag...) I took a train directly from my field site to Milan. We stayed in Milan (just out of the core) with a former professor from the Geography Department at Carleton, which was great. Took the train to Venice on Thursday morning and spent two days there, staying at a bed and breakfast. Went back to Milan on Saturday, walked around a bit that afternoon and then watched Stage 9 of the Giro. Headed back to Zurich on Monday morning and then went dirctly back to my field site in the Loeschental for more sampling.

My shorts thoughts on my trip along with some photos and a link to more photos on my Facebook page.

Venice

• Amazing, beautiful city. Almost entirely car free on the island. Although very expensive (especially in high season (which by my calculations is about 51 weeks a year), but if you make that one week low season, look out!

Venice!!!

• Most tourists actually only spend a day and arrive at the train station and beeline for San Marco square, take a gondola ride, have a gelato and then get back on the train, so the afternoons could be busy in the main areas, but the evenings and later nights were great.

San Marco Square at night

• Spent a lot of time walking the city and the spots away from the main squares (which are very nice) are amazingly calm and beautiful.
• The city is a maze of streets and canals and streets that end in canals. Did a lot of backtracking.
• One of my favourite things to do in any city is to go to the market and Venice didn't disappoint with it's fresh seasfood.
  
• Randomly there was an extreme Catamaran race on Friday afternoon. It was pretty cool to sit on the waterfront (despite less than sunny weather) and watch some sailing.

Milan

• Nice to visit, wouldn't want to live here. To begin with I'm not a huge fan of big cities, but it was overly busy and very dirty (although living in Switzerland I guess everywhere is dirty compared). Overall, not a fan.
• Spent a bit of time walking around the core. The Duomo Cathedral was very impressive (I guess any building that takes 200+ years to finish will be) and the first indoor mall (The Galleria) was nice, although I'm not sure how anyone affords anything sold there.

The Cathedral from the front. Amazing detail up close.

• There is a nice castle in the middle of the city which houses a couple of mueums and is surrounded by a great central park.

Giro

• Great to finally have a chance to see a cycling race in the flesh. Obviously my goal was to see Lance. Mission: accomplished. Also saw lots of other top riders.
  

Lance out of the saddle

• Cool stage because it was 11 different laps around the city which allowed us to see racers more than once. Managed to slowly walk across the city and see the racers in a few different places.
• This will however be known as the stage that wasn't. The riders weren't very impressed with the safety of the course and they staged a protest that involved stopping 3 laps in and addressing the crowd and taking a lesiurely ride around the course. Race officials caved and said that no changes in the GC would take place. So despite a Mark Cavendish sprint to the finish, everyone was awarded the same time.

Cavendish sprinting for the finish in Milan

Lots of other photos of my trip here.

All in all, a great trip. Italy is big though and I plan on going back. However, next time I hope to hit the Dolomites (perhaps with a MTB) and southern Italy (Pompeii and Mount Etna). Next big trip is back to Ottawa from June 9th to the 21st. See you then...?