It's been a month since we came to Italy and city of Crema. First days were passing really slow, but last two weeks passed quickly.
Research is coming to the last phase. We spent first three weeks figuring out how to utilize OpenCV with it's limited capabilities (but good portability). Now we have some interesting tools at our disposal.
This Friday 25th (day after tomorrow),we will present our work to PhD students at University of Milan. Everybody in the group is excited to meet all those students (they said there will be more than 50). After we present our work, we will have our usual weekly meeting with host collaborators and then see some presentations by host students. A whole program is available at this page:
Last weekend we decided to travel (despite the bad weather). We revisited Milan on Saturday, since there were some places we didn't visit last time and went to Venice on Sunday (that visit was planned for some time).
On the first eight pictures you can see some famous places in Milan - First one is Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, awhich leads to the Duomo square. On second and third picture is University of Milan (Universita degli Studi di Milano) main building (Although that is only one part of this very big University with various campuses across Milan and region). Fourth picture is the one of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Church that is more than 500 years old is not only famous religious site, but also a place where they keep "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci. Of course, in order to see it you have to reserve a ticket two weeks ahead - so we settled with visiting exhibition of da Vinci's hand drawings ( not that it was any less impressive!). After that we visited Castello Sforzesco - a very big castle with interesting complex inside. It is probably most visited attraction in the Milan (beside Duomo Cathedral). On the fifth picture you can see Arc of the Peace at Porta Sempione in the background (picture was taken from the castle, but in opposite direction). People that visited Paris say that this Arc is not smaller than famous Arc de Triomphe... After visiting all historical sites we decided to go to the "Temple of Soccer" - San Siro. To those of you who never watched soccer - that's stadium Giuseppe Meazza, shared by two of the best clubs from Italy and Europe - AC Milan and FC Internazionale (Inter). We were not able to go to the pitch, because some stage was disassembled at that time - but we had a privilege of visiting both locker rooms and best seats at the stands. On the last picture - Gelato! (what a surprise!)...but not the ordinary ice-cream - this one was the biggest ice-cream I ever saw in my life, let alone ate. And it was delicious as usual. After regaining energy and relaxing for couple of minutes we went back to our base camp - Crema.
Next day we had to get up at 5 AM to catch the train to Venice (via Milan). It was raining and we felt it's not going to be a pleasant sightseeing day. And it wasn't. The wind and heavy rain made impossible to enjoy Venice and all it has to offer. In the short periods when rain stopped we took some pictures (four of which I am posting - in the last row of pictures). We hope that we will revisit Venice too, since there is some music festival in the first weekend of July. Then I will make more detailed tour of Venice.
Me and three of my colleagues and friends from FAU just settled in this city in northern Italy. The weather is sunny but cool, comes as a refreshment after hot days in Boca Raton. We traveled to Milano by plane, and then had a kind of adventure of traveling by metro - train - train to get to Crema. Our friends Fulvio and Stelvio from the host University of Milano were kind to pick us up from the train station. We already had arrangements for the apartment, so we settled in pretty quickly. Although the trip was long and exhausting we had to go around and see the center of the city. It's a beautiful old city, with churches in almost every street and a cathedral at the central square.
