Some photos from Italy

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I’m skipping over Austin for the time being and showing some photos from Italy so that I can pretend the blog is vaguely up to date.

This is the view from my apartment window on a Saturday afternoon:

I’m staying in the centre of Florence this time (as opposed to out in the ‘burbs near the Institute) so it’s all narrow streets and stately buildings and a view through to the side of Santa Maria Novella church. Heck yeah, as the Italians wouldn’t say.

My second weekend here I went to Rome:

Oh hey it’s the Colosseum.

I didn’t take many photos in Rome, because I’ve never worked out how to get on camera the sorts of things that stick out to me like the assertiveness you need to cross the road and the rollercoaster ride of friendliness and rudeness you get from staff in touristy areas. But even my cheap-o point and shoot can get a cliche shot of a Really Old Building.

Finally, looking out down the hill from Perugia:

I was in Perugia for only a day, and half of that was visiting a group at the physics department there and giving a talk about some of my research. Unfortunately the physics building there is as ugly as every other physics building in the world — I guess it would be hard to set up modern lab space in some gorgeous medieval castle — but I met some friendly people who clearly enjoyed doing interesting research, so that totally makes up for the 60s architecture. And there was plenty of time afterwards for taking photos like the above.

Dallas to Austin by Amtrak

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If you don’t have a car, there are three ways to get from Dallas to Austin: fly, greyhound or take the train. I decided flying was out because I feel ridiculous flying such a short distance (~300 km). I wasn’t sure I was up for the kahrazy adventures every reckons you get on the greyhound, so train it was.

Turns out it’s also the cheapest way to go, at least if you buy a ticket in advance. Which you may as well do, because there’s only 1 train per day so it’s not like you need any flexibility. (Yes, people from countries with developed passenger rail infrastructure, that’s right. One. Per day.)

It’s also the slowest way to go, taking well over twice as long as the ‘hound. As in, 6-7 hours. For 300 km. But on the plus side, the seats are massive, with heaps of legroom and proper leg rests, and you do feel very dignified crawling along through the country side in the late afternoon, with views like this:

In fact, having previously travelled by rail from Denver to SF (scheduled time: 35 hours; actual time: more like 40), the 7-ish hours for Dallas to Austin positively flew by, and before I knew it I’d arrived in Austin. Which I really must write about soon, so that this blog gets to Italy while I’m still here.

Dallas

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Apparently Perth has been called ‘Dallas by the sea’. I can see where that’s coming from, though I’d say it as ‘Dallas is Perth without the amazing beaches’. That is to say, it’s pleasant enough, it seems like it would be an ok place to live if you had friends there, it’s also rather sprawling and not busy at all.

I was there for 6 days for a conference. Timewise, the number 1 place I went to was the convention centre, number 2 was my hotel bed, and number 3 was hanging out with other physics people, mostly in restaurants and bars. Including a bar with a taxidermied animal head wearing a hat:

It was disconcerting sitting eating a burger and drinking iced tea with that guy next to me.

Of course, one of the things Dallas is known for is the shooting of JFK. The Sixth Floor Museum is all about “the assassination and legacy of President John F. Kennedy”. I though the part about the “legacy” (ie: a bunch of people saying why they thought Kennedy was important/inspirational) would have been better served by a more in-depth look at the historical background — various themes such as the Cold War and Kennedy wanting to promote American ideals via peaceful means were mentioned, but there wasn’t much analysis. That said, it was a fun way to spend an afternoon when the thought of more physics talks was just too much.

Anyway, to finish with an amusing anecdote: Towards the end of the week, I got a cab back from a bar one night. I mentioned to the driver that I was at a conference. He said, “Oh, you’re a physician — no wait, a physicist!” I guess he’d driven a lot of conference-goers around that week.

Science! Ant rafts

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I got into Florence this afternoon, after ~20 hours of travel – bleagh! I will try catch up on the rest of my time in the US soon, but for now here’s some fun science:

(Sorry about the ad at the start.)

One of the talks I happened across at the conference was about a sort of model for ant rafts. Like any good physics model, it was heavily simplified: a pile of staples being shaken. The idea was to look at how the aspect ratio of the staples (ie: how wide their base is relative to their arms) affects how well a pile of them holds up to the shaking. It turns out there’s an optimal arm-to-base ratio, since if the arms are too short they can’t lock into each other, but if the arms are too long the pile doesn’t fit together well.

I’m not sure how directly you could apply this to real ants that have six bendy arms rather than two rigid ones, but it’s a nice start on the question of how ant rafts hold together.

New Orleans, Day 2

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After spending most of Thursday in the French Quarter, we decided that yesterday needed to be a little slower and more laid back, so we headed uptown. (It’s not just you — I too have the song ‘Uptown girl’ stuck in my head.) This was a day of picnicking in Aubodon Park and wandering along St Charles Ave checking out the old mansions. In a what-was-I-thinking move, I didn’t get any photos of mansions, but there’s some photos here that give you some idea.

The leafy green uptown area is so very different to the Quarter, but there are things that make you realise you are in the same city after all:

Lamp post with beads.

New Orleans, day 1

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Hello from New Orleans! So far, I am having an amazing time (except for the jetlag, which is leading me to write this post as I lie awake at 3:30 am – boo!). I’m visiting with K and S, two friends of mine who live a few hours away and are here for a few days too. I’m here until Sunday, when I fly to Dallas for my conference.

Yesterday was a day of food, wandering around in the French Quarter, sunshine (and sunburn, to my shame!), music, and chilling out. We started by heading to Cafe Du Monde for beignets and coffee. Upon finding that the line at the main cafe stretched almost to their second cafe, we wandered down the river front to that second cafe and bought them there, eating them on a bench by the river.

The Mississippi, New Orleans

Full of delicious sweet fatty food and coffee, we wandered around the Quarter for a while. The French Quarter is where most tourists go in New Orleans, which is fair enough since it’s full of shops and bars and pretty buildings like this:

One thing these photos don’t show is the smell — everywhere you go you get whiffs of either delicious food or flowers or stinky garbage/urine/stale beer. I can only imagine how much more everything would smell in summer!

After our wander, we settled in Jackson Square to read and draw and relax. The view looked a bit like

The statue is of Andrew Jackson, who in 1812 led the American forces against the British in the Battle of New Orleans and won quite decisively — 5000 American soldiers beat 7500 British soldiers, with only 13 american casualties. Unfortunately, he was also pro slavery and ethnic cleansing of native americans. So, not exactly a great guy all around, but a pretty good miltary commander.

After a bit more wandering around and some very sweet lemonade that I had to dilute, we headed out to Elizbeth’s in Bywater for delicious, delicious dinner. I had the liver with onions, which was simple, and simply amazing. (It was also huge and I still have half of it in a takeaway container in my hotel room fridge — by the time I finish it all off, I’ll never have iron deficiency ever again!)

After that, we went back to the Quarter and after an epic quest for parking we made it to Preservation Hall for some live music. The venue is great — it really is just a hall that hasn’t changed much at all in the past decades, with a stage at the front and not much else. No bar, no bathroom facilities, just a hall. It’s quite dark and they don’t allow flash photography, so it’s a bit hard to show what it’s like, but if you ignore the bluriness, it’s like

All in all, a fun day (except perhaps for the sunburn). I’m glad I’m staying out in the Garden District so that I can see a different side to New Orleans, too, but the Quarter is definitely worth spending some time in.

Places I would like to go: Bologna.

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I have been to Bologna Centrale train station at least a dozen times — it’s a hub for getting from Florence to almost anywhere north of Florence, such as Venice, Padova, Ferrara, Verona, etc etc. However, I’ve never been outside of a 10 minute walk radius of the station, since I’ve always been passing through with perhaps an hour to spare, but no more.

Which is unfortunate really, since the little of Bologna I have seen suggests it’s really nice:

Statue with horse

Bare tree and street

Also, friends who have been there say the food is really good, and I would travel to an ugly concrete box town in the middle of the desert if you could promise me the food was good.

Fortunately for my wish to go to Bologna, I’ll be in Florence again in April, so I think it’s high time I made a Saturday day-trip there.

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Me with European cities sign post near the Atomium in Brussels

5 weeks and 2 days until I head out the door again – hopefully with more useful navigational aids than this!

This photo is from a couple of years ago. After I went to Italy the first time, I took a few weeks holidays and wound up spending a day in Brussels. I had expected it to be a bit like Canberra only bigger, but was wrong – it didn’t suck even a little bit (note for non-aussie readers: bashing canberra, our national capital, is a hobby all australians enjoy).

One of the tourist things to do in Brussels is to visit ‘Little Europe’. I didn’t actually do this, since we arrived just after it closed, but I did get this photo outside it.