Dates of travel: May 13th - May 17th, 2009 Recently, my buddy Robert and I got back from one of the best trips I have ever been on. We went to the Gargano Peninsula which is known as the "Spur of Italy" because Italy is shaped like a boot, and the peninsula is located in the exact position of a spur on a boot. The final destination was a small town on the Adriatic Sea called VIESTE. Our arrival in Vieste happened about 17 hours after leaving Milan the day before, but the long trek to southern Italy was absolutely worth [View Full Entry]

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If you've seen the movie Dumb and Dumber, then you might recognize the quote in the title of this blog entry from when he (Jim Carrey's character) talks to an AUSTRIAN girl and erroneously says a stereotypical Australian phrase. Dates of travel: April 15th-17th We drove from Milan to Austria and arrived at the Hilton Innsbruck at around 1am and almost immediately went to bed because the drive was long and exhausting. It would have been really cool to make that drive during the day because we drove right through the mountains and went through dozens of mountain passes, including th [View Full Entry]

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Dates of travel: April 10th-13th Friday, April 10th My parents arrived to Milan on Friday morning and after giving them a quick tour of my residence and packing up my bags, we hit the road in our rental car and started driving south to Rome. I had arranged it with our familiy in Rome so that we would be able to stay at their house for the long weekend. We were all very anxious and excited to get there because it had been about 2 months since I had seen them and about 6 years since my parents and brother had [View Full Entry]

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Dates of travel: March 25-28th, 2009 My buddy Vincent and I found roundtrip tickets to Stockholm, Sweden for around 34 euros (or 45 USD). This was a no brainer and we didn't need much time to think about it. When we saw the tickets online about 4 weeks ago, we booked the flight almost immediately. We didn't really know anything about the city at the time of booking. In fact - the title of this blog entry does a good job of summing up our collective knowledge of the entire country prior to this trip. Wed. March 25th We took off [View Full Entry]

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Date of travel: Friday, March 13th The amazing thing about continental Europe is that it is so close and compact that you can take a daytrip to another country. Yesterday (Friday), I did not have any class so this is exactly what I did. I started planning this trip at 11pm on Thursday night and did not have enough time to tell anybody about it so I went by myself. This was probably a good thing because the first train of the day was at the crack of dawn and I wanted to be on it. I woke up at 5am [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday, March 8th I took a day trip to the city of Torino. This relatively small city was the location of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Vincent and I had meant to take this trip last weekend, but the night before we wanted to go....we ended up getting back to our residence at 4am and our train was at 8am! Whoops. It's a good thing that this happened though, because there was a HUGE chocolate festival going on in Torino this past weekend. It is held in Torino because this is where solid chocolate originated over 300 years ago! Vincent and [View Full Entry]

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When I was booking my flight to Scotland, I decided that I would turn it into a very long weekend and also visit IRELAND. I did this for 2 reasons--> One: I didn't want to overstay my welcome in Glasgow...and Two: Shannon, Ireland is only a 45 minute plane ride from Scotland. Friday, Feb. 20th After taking the train from Glasgow Central Station to the airport in Prestwick, I caught my 6:20pm flight to Shannon Airport in Ireland. On flights, I usually like to talk to the person that is sitting next to me because it always makes the flight go [View Full Entry]

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About 2 1/2 weeks ago I was talking to my friend Christy (who goes to Georgia Tech with me) about when I would be visiting her in Scotland. She is studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (pronounced glazz-go), and before leaving Atlanta in December we both said that we would visit eachother. Later that day I found a great deal on Ryanair and booked a one-way ticket on a whim to go visit her. *I also bought a one-way plane ticket to Ireland, but that will be a whole different blog entry.* Wednesday, Feb. 18th I woke up at [View Full Entry]

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Saturday Feb. 14th My friend Astrid and I had made plans about a week ago to make a trip to IKEA because I told her that I had never been to one. Astrid is from Lyon, France and she is one of my friends from the Arcobaleno residence. She has a car in Milan because she drove from France, so we took her car. It was a little bit of an adventure because on our way there we were on the wrong side of the canal for a few kilometers, but eventually we found a bridge to get over it and [View Full Entry]

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(...continued from previous blog entry) Saturday Feb. 7th: On Saturday I woke up extremely late because we stayed up until about 2:30 or 3am watching our rather interesting "soft-core" television show. If you don't understand this, read the corresponding blog. When I came downstairs, Donatella said in a very serious voice "Michael, you are alright? Or do feel sick?." I started laughing and then told her in Italian that I was tired because I stayed up very late. After I got ready, Christian and I went out and walked around Rome because Consuelo had to study math and Corinne had to [View Full Entry]

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