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So Long!

I'm finally home - so this is the end of the trip.

Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!

Dan

Saturday 2/18

Saturday was our last day in London before leaving - so we had to make the most of it. We spent the morning touring Saint Paul's Cathedral, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in the late 17th century and remains one of the largest cathedrals in the world. Much like everything else in London, it was built after the fire of 1666. We climbed all 530 steps to the top - to get a great view of the city of London from 108 meters.
The afternoon into the night was spent on a second walking tour - This one started in Trafalgar square and ended up right next to Big Ben and Parliament. That day, there had been a huge Muslim protest in Trafalgar Square against the Danish cartoon that had come out months ago. Most of it was cleaned up by the time we got there.
There is really so much to see and do in London - You could spend a week there and still not scrath the surface of places to go and things to see. I'd describe it as New York City and Washington, DC all rolled into one. I'm looking forward to going back - but everything is so expensive! Right now the British Pound is about 2:1 with the dollar, so it costs an arm and a leg for a decent meal. An all day subway ticket is 5.40 pounds - about $10.

A picture of Saint Paul's from the outside:
And a view from the top:
Obligatory Big Ben Pic:

Thursday 2/16 - Friday 2/17

Thursday and Friday were mostly spent doing work - visiting the warehouse and bureau in London, and another technology company in Cirencester, UK. However, we did make it back early enough on Friday afternoon to take a quick walking tour of the area around St. James' in London. We saw where the "Gentlemen's Clubs" are in London, where many of the Royal merchants have set up shop, and many of the houses where famous Brits lived. We went for a quick drink at the Lamb & Flag, one of the few buildings that survived the London fire of 1666, before grabbing dinner and heading back for the night.
I took a lot of pictures on the walking tour - but I'm going to have to go back through them with the tourbook to identify them - too many of the pictures look the same.

Wednesday 2/15

Wednesday was split between two places - Milan and London. In the morning, I took a short bus tour of the city that included seeing il Duomo and Leonardo Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" at Santa Maria della Grazie. Il Duomo was amazing - easily the biggest Catherdral I've ever seen, but seeing a copy of "The Last Supper" that Leonardo himself painted was incredible. The painting has been touched up several times in the last 500 years, but still - incredible. Unfortuntately, I wasn't able to take any pictures.
In the afternoon we took a two hour flight from Linate airport in Milan to London-Heathrow. A 45 minute cab ride brought us to Grosvenor House, a hotel on Park Lane in London. The hotel has a lot of potential, but was dissappointing in quite a few regards.

Pictures from 2/15 -
il Duomo - The front was under repair.

Part of the Plaza -

Pictures from 2/14

A picture of the ancient Basilica di Sant'Ambrogio. I don't have many other pictures from 2/14 because most of the day was spent shopping or in the museum.

Tuesday, 2/14

This might be the last post I can do tonight - my battery is about to die and I don't have a British/US Power converter.

Tuesday was the first day we spend in Milan, even though we had already spent two nights there. In the morning, we went to the Leonardo DiVinci Science and Technology museum, and we spent the afternoon shopping. The museum was interesting, although not everything was in English - about a third of the exhibits only had explanations written in Italian. Not knowing any Itallian has definately been a problem on this trip. Simple things like taking a taxi or ordering from a bar are a humbling experince. Luckily, a good portion of the people in Milan understand a small amount of English.

2/13 - Pictures

A view of the halfpipe from our seats.
Leaving Bardonecchia.

Monday 2/13

On Monday we woke up early and took the 7:10 train from Torino to Bardonecchia, the small town in the Alps where the skiing and snowboarding events were being held. After about an hour train ride, we arrived in Bardonecchia where it was a lot colder. We had some problems getting our tickets but we ended up with decent seats for the Women's snowboarding halfpipe that day.
The event was great. In the morning, there was a 2 hour qualification session that limited the field of 36 participants down to 12. It was obvious very early that the US was the team to beat, as they were clearly superior to most of the other contestants. Later that afternoon, the top 12 from the morning session each had two runs down the halfpipe to score points with the judges. The US competition came mainly from a Norwegian boarder, and a couple of the Japanese entrants. At the end of the day, the US came out 1-2, but the Norwegian took the bronze to preven the US sweep.
We took the train back to Torino, and got a bite to eat before we took the train back to Milan, where we were staying that night.

Pictures from 2/12

In the middle of Torino.
An impressive Cathedral from the Plaza with the Today Show.
A negative of the shroud.

Playing Catchup

I haven't had the time to update in a few days or so, so I'll play catchup here and post the happenings and pictures from the past 4 days.

Sunday - 2/12 - Torino

Sunday was an early morning again. Not 4:30 early, but 6:30 early after a late night. We took the train to Torino again and spent the morning walking around the city. We walked through the huge plaza where they are filming the Today show. Medals Plaza, which isn't too far away from there, was closed off until the ceremonies later that night. We picked up tickets to women's 3000m speed skating for later that afternoon and headed off to the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist, where we saw the Shroud of Turin. After seeing where the shroud is housed, we grabbed a late lunch before heading down to Oval Lingotto - the site of the speed skating.
The speed skating was a lot better than I thought. First of all, the place was about 3/4 filled with dutch people. Not many Americans were in attendance at all. The competition was pretty fierce, and the crowd really got into it during some of the better runs. The dutch came out with the gold, much to the delight of the crowd.
That night, we checked into a hotel in Torino rather than take the 2 hour train back to Milan. We were headed to Bardonecchia the next day.

Check out that TINY Car

An Olympic Banner

Looong Day -

I was up at 4:30 AM, and on the train to Torino at 6. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the day working with the major news organization that I work with most every day. I didn't get to see much in the way of the Olympics (or anything else outside of a warehouse), but I'll post a few pics to prove I was there.
The best thing about Italy so far is the food- absolutely fantastic.

And still going ....

Still operating without sleep. It's 1 AM here, so I'm going on about 36 hours at this point. Not much sleep to look forward to either - we're leaving at 5 am tommorow to catch the train for Torino.

Tonight we (myself and a couple of coworkers) went out to dinner at around 10. We went to a "genuine" Italian restaurant - and it was great! All of the food was delicious. Lucky for us, it seems that most people here know enough English to keep a conversation going.

And a good bidet to you, sir!

And so the journey begins ...

I left on my trip yesterday morning from Troy, NY, drove over to Albany International Airport and took a shuttle down to JFK. From there - a quick jaunt over the Atlantic that brought me here: Heathrow Airport in London. I have a 6 hour layover before my flight for Milan leaves.
I was hoping that there would be free WiFi access in the airport, but no such luck. I was forced to pay 10 pounds for a 24-hour access pass. Well worth it. I also didn't realize that my cell phone wouldn't dial out unless I dialed the US country code first, and I had no idea what that was (turns out it was 1). What a strange country. I'm looking forward to spending more time here next week, but right now I can't wait to get to the hotel in Milan and go to sleep.