The Blog Lives! En Italia!

I don't quite know what I'm going to do when we go to a different continent, but for now the url still makes sense!

Michael and I are here in Italy for two weeks - we're doing another "Michael has a bunch of collaborators in Europe so he's planned an epic trip and Valerie is tagging along" type of vacation. Our first week is in L'Aquila, visiting an old colleague at the university here, and then next week we head to Elba Island, where he's got a gravitational wave conference. I head back to the US at that point, but Michael will continue on to Amsterdam, Nice, and Copenhagen.

Anyway, L'Aquila:

   I didn't know much about this town before we started planning this trip, but so far it's been kind of fascinating. The most defining thing about this town is that it was decimated by a large earthquake in 2009 - and ten years later there is still a shocking amount of reconstruction occurring, as well as whole blocks that just seem to have been abandoned rather than rebuilt. It kind of seems that the "town" mostly moved to the outskirts and was built from scratch, and the old downtown (where we are staying) is still undergoing a lot of work. And yet, in and among patch-worked buildings and crumbling structures are all the usual storefronts, coffeehouses and daily life activities that one would expect from a mid-sized university town. The biggest culture shock that we faced when we first arrived in the late afternoon, totally jet-lagged and basically zombies, is that none of the restaurants around opened for dinner until about 8pm - needless to say we didn't have dinner and just went to bed, instead.

 

I'd never heard of L'Aquila before and it turns out my Italian geography is sketchy at best, so here is a map.

The bus ride from the airport in Rome was about 2 hours, and the bits that I managed to stay awake for were gorgeous, as we headed inland and up into the Apennine Mountains.

We spent our first day here fighting with jet-lag and getting our bearings around town, and wandered to most of the historic places to visit. At the top of the hill is an old castle fortress - the interior structure was badly damaged in the earthquake so it's no longer open to the public, but the outer bulwarks are still impressively imposing, particularly with the dramatic mountain peaks drifting in and out of the clouds in the background.  Then we walked across town to visit the local Art History museum (moved from it's original location in the castle post earthquake and into a really lovely modern facility). We also stumbled across the "Fontana delle 99 Cannelles", or the Fountain of 99 Spouts, which one of the more famous sites in the region. There are indeed 99 sculpted faces in various weathering states, and it was quite pretty. And finally, we went to the local basilica, Santa Marie di Collemaggio, which has a really distinctive stonework pattern that was really beautiful. The basilica was nearly completely destroyed in the earthquake and reconstruction only recently finished - it was somewhat jarring to be touring these really old historic monuments and they all smelled like fresh plaster and paint. But it was also reinforced the significance and cultural weight that places like these hold - history is rarely kind and so people recover and rebuild, and in another year or so when the place airs out the history will still be there to be enjoyed and admired.

The courtyard outside our hotel.

This picture doesn't quite convey just how massive the moat is - this would have been a well defended position to hold.

The scenery is just breathtaking.

The Fountain of 99 Spouts. Pink and white stone something of a theme in all the local monuments. 

The fountain was first built around 1270, and the spouts have been restored to varying levels.

Hi!

The snow-capped mountains peaking out of the clouds get me every time.

It's really pretty.

The National Museum of Abruzzo.

The Basilica.

The rest of the week will likely be relatively low-key - it's expected to keep raining steadily until we leave (we got lucky on Sunday!) and we've got a nice work set up at the Gran Sasso Science Institute and pretty long to-do lists. Jan and Marika (Michael's colleagues) are being excellent hosts and will be showing us around a bit, so I'm looking forward to some local advice on food and activities!