Quote of the Day #1: “The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.” — Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
Quote of the Day #2: “Very fetching.” — Professor Alistair Duckworth, my very British Grand Tour teacher, of my friend and his student Hayley. We went to Santa Croce today, and Hayley wore a shirt that bared her shoulders. She was asked to put on what resembled a disposable blue smock.
Wow. That was quite a weekend. I read over 300 pages of everything you can imagine that relates to Italy, not to mention I typed 3 pages for a take-home quiz. Yuck. At least it’s over now. But I’ve got a whole bunch more reading to do this week. Argh! Who am I kidding. It won’t end until I leave, and I don’t want that to come.
Two discoveries made this weekend: First, on one of the main streets near the Duomo there’s a telephone room. It’s where a store would be and there’s like a dozen phone booths inside. I figure that if I take the one in back I might actually be able to hear my parents when I call home. Second, I have found a good place to get my film developed. Okay, so Dr. Carribino told me to go there, but he says that quality is great and they made photo CDs. That means that in the next couple of days I’ll be able to put photos up on my website of all the places I’ve been to so far.
I am looking into going to Milan this Sunday. I’m going to Venice on Friday and Saturday with the program, so it would be a lot to do. And I know that I won’t be able to see the whole city in one day. Honestly, I want to go just to see The Last Supper, and everything else I get to see is just gravy. I’m hoping to find a couple of people who feel the same way, who don’t want to devote an entire weekend to Milan but would like to see it and experience a couple of things there.
I’m still trying to figure out where I’m going to go the last weekend I’m in Europe. I’ve begun to consider going to London, just because I don’t know if I’ll ever be back to Europe (I hope I will, but you never know) and that’s one place I’d like to see. A lot of people I know are going skiing in Switzerland, but that doesn’t appeal to me. I want to see something that I can’t see anywhere else. I can ski in the US (it might not be as good, which is debatable, but I can do it). I want to see something that is unique to that place. London has a lot of that. I’m not sure how many people there are here who would want to go there though. I’m open to going by myself, but I’d prefer not to.
The rest of today should be pretty easy. I’ve got one more class at 3:30. It does last three hours, but there’s no quiz (that’s the class that had the take-home). So it’ll just be a lot of note taking. Tonight the crew is planning to go to “our” restaurant.
Okay, I’d like to encourage whoever the heck reads this crap to comment on it. I know someone looks at it because my homepage hit counter tells me so. Consider this a gentle nudge in the right direction.
