Italy

Well I’m back from a one week trip to Italy to teach at “GII Scuola di Dottoratio in Ingegneria Informatica” held at the University of Siena.
We arrived into Rome on Saturday after spending a good portion of our time on the Detriot/Rome flight playing the inflight trivia game. Nothing like a slow trivia game to pass the hours. In Rome we stayed in the Hotel Forum, which is very centerally located, just a stones throw from these ruins

and a hop skip and a jump to a certain, very famous, fountain:

On Sunday we made our way to Florence, where we did the requisite looking at some cathedrals

Unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to see it, but apparently Galileo’s embalmed finger is in Florence. I wonder which finger it was? Actually I also would have liked to see if the church where Galileo sat timing the period of the swings of the chandeleers allowed h
After Florence, we headed to Siena. Siena is a very beautiful medieval town on a hill. It is filled with tourists. We were there just after Siena’s famous Palio horse race. In the Palio di Siena, the seventeen different neighborhoods (contrades) of Siena compete against each other for grand bragging rights and a whole lot of pride. While we missed the actual race, the team that won this years race had not won in over forty years. Needless to say, this meant that they were still celebrated when we arrived, and, we were told, would continue to celebrate for as many days as years since they had last won the Palio! Part of this celebration involves things like going into enemy contrades late at night and pounding drums and singing songs taunting the enemy.
While in Siena, I taught here

Well, actually the venue where I taught was the school of Economis at the University of Siena, whose entrance is just to the right of this large church. I taught twelve hours of lectures to computer science and engineering graduate students on quantum computing. The lectures went well, I think, and they really treated us very nicely in Siena.
Before leaving on Saturday, I got a chance to do some siteseeing. I felt right at home…here are some Popes

Before the twenty four hour trip back home, I bought myself a nice big book of Sudoko. If you haven’t tried Sudoko, please take it from me and avoid Sudoko at all costs! This little logical number game is very addictive. I must have spent twelve hours on the trip home working on these puzzles.