Our Italy trip

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We spent 10 days in Italy in early April. It was a lot of fun.

Back when I was a grad student, I stayed in Pisa for a month for a "summer school on mobile computing" in 2003. Mobile computing was the next "big" thing back then. (In retrospect, the research was misguided about the local/distributed approach to it, as most of mobile computing reconciled to cloud backends as that is often more efficient.) When I was in Pisa, I didn't travel around much, but I now realize I should have spent every weekend traveling. (In my defense, without Internet enabling trip planning/execution, and without GPS on the phone, traveling was very cumbersome, yes, back in 2003.)


Rome

Rome is amazing! The history is incredibly well preserved. Kudos to the Italians.

Rome is very walkable. The buses, on the other hand, were packed solid. My daughters were genuinely surprised by this exotic new form of transportation that does not exist in the US.

The art in the Vatican was exquisite. All the masters, all in one place. But the wait times in lines were horrendous.

Tiramisu is truly wonderful. But (please don't stone me for this) I don't like the coffee. I had promised myself I would drink coffee everywhere, and I tried. But the latte, and even the espresso, just didn't feel that good to me. It was mostly lukewarm. I've gotten used to hot coffee, so I quickly gave up my quest to find my coffee high in Italy. 

As I broke the news to you in this blog post (a post about Jensen Huang, of all things), I got pickpocketed at the Trevi Fountain.

"Here's the strange part. After the initial shock and the credit-card cancellations, I found myself thinking: this person was unbelievably good at their job. I felt nothing. No bump, no distraction, nothing. The wallet disappeared from the deep front pocket of my jeans like a magic trick. Respect. I remember thinking: if only I were that good at my own work."


Venice

Venice is simply beautiful. The buildings, the canals, the whole scene were beautiful. The old town doesn't even allow motorcycles, so everything is foot-powered. Everything is well preserved.



Lake Como

Lake Como looked out of this world. It was trippy. 


But there were lines everywhere. The ferries ran very inefficiently, and 2-hour wait times were the norm. And this wasn't even peak season. Italians are not the best at organizing/running things. In Italy there are lines everywhere: cafes, restaurants, ferries. Everywhere. A good chunk of my time in Italy was spent waiting in lines.


Turin

Turin is bigger and more metropolitan. It is very clean. I didn't get to see much of it, unfortunately.


The night before our early flight back to the States, we stayed near the Milan airport, in a little town called Somma Lombardo. Even that town was beautiful, with buildings dating from the 1500s, all in remarkably well-preserved shape.


So, what happened to Italy?

Italy was very active at the start of the tech revolution. Olivetti could have been the center of gravity for the personal computer revolution, you know. And then there are these magnificent brands from Italy, including Ferrari, Lamborghini, Fiat, Alfa Romeo. So why don't we see any more of that innovation? 

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