Today, we made a day trip up to the marble country. We started out visiting a sculpture studio. We then went to the village of Pietrasanta, where we toured a museum's plaster model collection. Plaster models are used by marble sculptors as practice and reference for their final sculptures. After lunch, we toured nearby sculpture yards, where anything marble is made, from statues to columns. Though we did not see it, Pietrasanta is home to Michelangelo's own ...

Today was a free day - we did have the option of hiking around the Cinque Terra, or visiting another city by train, but as it was raining, Becky and I opted to make a short visit to the nearby town of Levanto. Unlike many Cinque Terra villages, Levanto is larger, and largely accessible by vehical. We walked around for a while before eating our first official Italian meal. After lunch, we walked down to the beach, and took some photos, and then walked back to t...

We arrived in Vernazza in the early afternoon, after having to take three separate trains to get there from Milan. After meeting the professor for the last portion of the trip, Todd, we hiked up to our various rooms to put our bags away. The room that I was in was up, almost at the top of one of the hills the village is built upon, and it took over 200 stairs to reach it. Then, the group went up to the lookout tower together, and hung out until it closed at ...

For the last day of our second free-travel week, Becky, Shandra, and I decided to go see Schloss Neuschwanstein. We caught a train from Basel to Zurich, and from there on to Munich Saturday night, and stayed the night in Munich. This morning, we caught a train out to a small village, where we would then be riding a bus up to Neuschwanstein. What we didn't know was that it wasn't a bus... oh no, it was a human sardine can on wheels. Apparently, though the bus ...

This is our last day in Basel, Switzerland, and it's been quite an adventure. After the hustle of group travel in Spain, it was nice to have some down-time and see things on a more relaxed schedule. Becky, Shandra, and I took the train up from Granada, and had two long days of travel Saturday and Sunday. We spent the first couple of days of the week relaxing and exploring the old section of Basel. We also took a day to go out and visit the Vitra chair factory...