Ciao Italia!

Being a scientist does have some advantages, one of which is traveling around the world to meet with other scientists. So I've decided to write a little about some of the places that I get to visit. Back in October of 2004 I had the pleasure of visiting our R&D and Production facility in Italy.

I'm Fresh off the plane and my hotel is located about 45 minutes from Rome, a place called Villa Degli Angeli (The city of Angels!). It sits on a volcanic lake, and as you can see from the photo, the view from my room was spectacular. The weather was absolutely beautiful too, mid to upper 80's during the day and cooling to the lower 70's at night.

Yes, I know, I can't believe that I have to work under these conditions either! It's a tough job, but someone has to do it!

Anyway, I don't speak Italian and it seems that out in the middle of nowhere Italy they don't speak English! Lucky for me the hotel staff is mainly college students who have been wanting to practice English, talk about luck! I recieve a crash course in conversational Italian so that I can at least be polite to the locals, and possibly survive the next few days!
Whenever I travel trough too many time zones (no I'm not going to get into time travel again, I got that out of my system!), as in going to Europe, I ususally try to arrive at least a day ahead of when I am supposed to be responsible for thinking, or responding with any intelligent thoughts. This trip was no different and I was able to adjust to the time change while finding out a little bit about the area. The hotel sits directly across the lake from Castelgandolfo, the Pope's summer home. The picture to the left was taken from my patio while I was testing my ability to hold still and utilize my 30x digital zoom!

After finding this out I immediately phoned the front desk and had word sent to the Pope to see if he would like to join me for coffee, or purhaps a beer later in the day. It turns out that the pope,at that time, was a wine drinker and refused to have audience with me. (Just kidding! But this may be one of the stories that my Grandson will hear more details about. Shhh! Dont't tell his Grandmother!)

The photo below was taken later that evening. It was really beatiful because from the angle that I was viewing, the sun sat directly behind Catelgandolfo! The next few days I spent working about another 45 mins drive, further from Rome, and returned "home" to my room each night to be greeted with this view. My daily ritual was to enjoy a cappacino while watching the sun rise, work all day, return to "home" to sit on my patio and watch the sunset whil enjoying either a cold biere (beer) or a glass of wine, then sample the finest Italian cuisine for dinner!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I did visit Trivi Fountain and tossed a coin over my shoulder, I will be returning to Rome one day!

Ciao Italia, for now!