Whatever Joey does blog

[kladner]

Including history with science is the kind of thing I encountered in Great Books programs. I commend it!
The trip sounds fabulous. Bon voyage!

[Nick]

Originally Posted by jvang

I'll be leaving for Italy as part of a trip sponsored by EF Tours for our school. We'll be traveling to a few places, passing mainly through Florence and Rome with a detour to Assisi. Lots of cool things we'll be seeing, and if I remember I'll take pictures of all the cool things.

Most people visiting Florence focus on the art (Michelangelo and all that), but it was very important for science as well.
If you get a chance to visit the Museo Galileo you will see that progress in science at the start of the 17th century got an enormous boost because, for the first time, serious precision instruments could be built: telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, you name it.
They didn't yet have calculus (Newton and Leibniz came later) but they could at last start measuring things accurately and thinking about the world in a new way from what they saw.

We hope you have a great time in Italy!

[ET_]

Let us know if you pass near Bergamo (48 miles from Milan): we might share some food (not only for thougts) and I will show you our University: John Nash was used to visit it as well...

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by Nick

Welcome back! We haven't seen you here since 2016 and back then you were still a kid!

Still is a kid.

For that matter, I'm still a kid in many respects.

For the record, when I joined this forum, I was a 17 year old recent graduate of IMSA. If the acronym seems familiar, it's no coincidence.

[jvang]

The trip was pretty great. Most of our time was spent in the lower half of Italy, which is more "artsy" than the northern part. I took quite a few pictures, not sure about how I'll upload a couple gigabytes of them

We spent about 10 days there; 2 parts were the most memorable. First was the cheese, especially the mozzarella. It's all local and fresh, and the mozzarella is just mind-blowingly amazing. Everywhere you go you can buy sandwiches with hunks of mozzarella on them, and at some places the appetizer consists of deli meats (so thin they melt in your mouth) and big balls of mozzarella the size of your fist

Second was the excursion to Capri. It's an island off the coast of Italy, near Naples. On the far side of the island are some pillars that are famous or something; we got to go on a little boat tour and check out the cliffs and go under some natural arches. On the island are a bunch of stores and shops, with homes and villas off to the sides. Apparently real estate is expensive on Capri, with a single square meter being worth over $25,000! There's also gardens and alternate views of the cliffs, so we saw those too. Capri was the last day of the trip and I had been a bit frugal with my money until then, so I picked up a pair of really nice Capri-brand watches, which are really expensive elsewhere. Although they were expensive already, but oh well; they're really nice.

Originally Posted by Nick

Most people visiting Florence focus on the art (Michelangelo and all that), but it was very important for science as well.

Yeah, we didn't really bother with the science stuff. This trip was chaperoned mostly by the humanities department, so art stuff was more of the focus.

Originally Posted by Dubslow

For the record, when I joined this forum, I was a 17 year old recent graduate of IMSA. If the acronym seems familiar, it's no coincidence.

Illinois, right? Assuming that the "MSA" part is "Math, Science, and the Arts."

Anyways, it's summer now so school's out. Not really much going on, so feel free to ask me more about the trip. I'm not good at remembering everything about the trip as a whole, but questions will help me recall more specific events.

[Nick]

Originally Posted by jvang

2 parts were the most memorable. First was the cheese, especially the mozzarella. It's all local and fresh, and the mozzarella is just mind-blowingly amazing.

It's good to hear that you enjoyed your trip! We had a similar experience cycling on the Greek island of Corfu. Our guide took us up into the hills and we stopped at a local bar where they gave us bread with oil, tomatoes, feta cheese and oregano. The ingredients were all local and so fresh that it felt like we were tasting them properly for the first time in our lives.

Originally Posted by jvang

Anyways, it's summer now so school's out. Not really much going on, so feel free to ask me more about the trip. I'm not good at remembering everything about the trip as a whole, but questions will help me recall more specific events.

Did you visit the National Archeological Museum at Naples? They have lots of the best bits taken from Pompeii, and also some funny statues like this one:

[jvang]

Originally Posted by Nick

The ingredients were all local and so fresh that it felt like we were tasting them properly for the first time in our lives.

Yeah, the only places that weren't fresh/local were franchises and convenience stores, and even then some foods (cheese!) were fresh/local anyways.

Originally Posted by Nick

Did you visit the National Archeological Museum at Naples?

We didn't stop in the city; we just took a look at the Bay of Naples, then ran off to Capri. We did drop by Pompeii itself, and toured a lot of it.

I've attached a picture from the far side of the island, facing the ocean instead of the mainland. The original panorama was really large, like 14000 pixels wide! I think that the rock formations off to the left are the famous ones. On this side of Capri there was a garden and this overlook where we could see a lot of the cliffs. Also, Capri is apparently known for lemons because there were lemon shops everywhere; fresh lemons, lemonade, lemon slush, lemon perfume, etc.

[ET_]

Originally Posted by jvang

Yeah, the only places that weren't fresh/local were franchjses and convenience stores, and even then some foods (cheese!) were fresh/local anyways.



We didn't stop in the city; we just took a look at the Bay of Naples, then ran off to Capri. We did drop by Pompeii itself, and toured a lot of it.

I've attached a picture from the far side of the island, facing the ocean instead of the mainland. The original panorama was really large, like 14000 pixels wide! I think that the rock formations off to the left are the famous ones. On this side of Capri there was a garden and this overlook where we could see a lot of the cliffs. Also, Capri is apparently known for lemons because there were lemon shops everywhere; fresh lemons, lemonade, lemon slush, lemon perfume, etc.

Yep, Capri is famous for "I Faraglioni" (The rock structures), la Grotta Azzurra (the azure cave) and the "Limoncello" (a alcoholic drink made with lemons).

[jvang]

Originally Posted by ET_

la Grotta Azzurra (the azure cave)

I don't think we saw that; the caves we saw were one with a rock shaped like the Virgin Mary and another with coral on the sides.

Also, final exams at my school were nice compared to my previous years of school. Some of the finals were pretty simple, and a couple teachers just didn't have a test. So that was a nice note to end on

Guess I'll post a picture every day about a part of my trip. Today's is one of the shots I got while driving into Naples on our way to Capri. The road we took had a little itty-bitty guardrail, then a sheer cliff leading down a couple hundred feet to the sea! Pretty crazy, especially since we were going 40-50 mph through the winding, hilly roads.

Most of the pictures I took were with my iPhone SE; is it just me or is the quality a bit low? Resolution-wise the pictures are very large, it just seems like the quality is lacking a bit.

[Nick]

Cool photos! Maybe the quality is a bit less if you are taking them through windows at 50mph, but they still look fine.

What struck me at Pompeii was that they had lots of things well arranged - clever engineering at the baths, pictures at stores to help people arriving by sea who didn't speak Latin, and so on -
but were still completely overwhelmed when the volcano erupted.


It's great that your exams went well. It must feel strange to be at the start of the summer break when you have already had a big foreign trip. Do you have any plans for the rest of the summer?

[jvang]

Originally Posted by Nick

What struck me at Pompeii was that they had lots of things well arranged - clever engineering at the baths, pictures at stores to help people arriving by sea who didn't speak Latin, and so on -
but were still completely overwhelmed when the volcano erupted.

Here's a shot from our stop at Pompeii. It's neat to see how far away the volcano is.


Not really much planned for the summer. We'll be going to visit my grandparents a bit, but that's about it.