Spring Update
many apologies. here is an updated of April-June!
please forgive the delays in posting. things got busy with my research but not without time for some exploration.
Local Fun:
Visiting the Botanical Gardens! Absolutely beautiful to see the spring blooms. The botanical gardens in Padua are one of the oldest in the world.
I rode with a friend to Villa Pisani. This villa has had some interesting historical events which can be read about on the website It was very pretty since everything was blooming. Downside was she got a flat so we had to walk the 9km back. We also had some delicious food. These little morsels are called cicchetti and can be quite varied.
Formula one is obviously having quite the surge in popularity thanks to Netflix, but auto racing is just fun to attend. Upon realizing how close I was to the race. I went with some ladies from Aviano Airbase down to Imola for the first practice of the Imola Formula One Grand Prix in May. This was the first time I had hung out with other Americans since coming to Italy. It was honestly kind of weird.
Other miscellaneous events:
Gira di Italia came through town. Weather was perfect for hammocking in the park. There is always something cool to photograph when you walk through town.
My brother and sister-in-law welcomed my nephew into the world at the beginning of May and I was able to attend the baptism in a way which felt special! Lastly, of course it would not be Italy without a photo of Gelato!
Further Afield:
Bergamo and Milan
One weekend I went to Bergamo and Milan. In Bergamo, I hung out with some friends of friends that are becoming my friends. I had pizza with some of their friends when I arrived and then the next day, we ran some errands and then went to the city alta (upper city) and had lunch and walked around. They taught me a cool fact or lore, it is debated, about the Venetian Lion (Lion of St Mark) on the gates to the city. If he is posed with the book open, then the city became part of the Venetian empire peacefully if the book is closed than it became part of the empire through bloodshed. In Milan, I went to visit Piera’s family because her granddaughters who met me at Easter kept wanting a visit from Linzi. We went to La Scala, a famous theater, and we spent a few hours exploring the museum and got to see the theater because there was no rehearsal. Lunch was of course pizza. We then went to the Milan Castle which happened to have a bunch of medieval kids games out for a children’s day so we spent the rest of the afternoon before my train playing there.
Campione (Lake Garda)
In mid-June for the Padua Saint’s holiday, every city in Italy has a patron saint and on their day, Padua is Saint Antonio. It was a Thursday this year, so my work also gave Friday off. I ended up going to Lake Garda. This was planned about three days before the holiday since my original plan of going to Florence was going to be overly expensive due to a music festival.
So, on google, I found this inexpensive hostel on the lake and reachable by the ferry or by the bus. Not knowing much, I booked. It turned out to be this little remote spot on the west side of the lake surrounded by cliffs. It is primarily a Wind/Kite surf bum location, their primary claim to existence and tourism is that they have the only beach you can directly kitesurf from. Given this of course I ended up trying it. (If you know me, I will always give some strange sport a try once). Unfortunately for you there are no photos of my floundering attempt. But here is a cool video of a junior’s competition that was going on while I was there. Other than watersports activities there were a total of 4.5 restaurants in the village. The half is for the little bodega there, and just like a ski bum town there also was bad cell signal.
The other days I spent either just relaxing reading a book or hiking for some epic views. On my way home, I stumbled into a local craft fair in one of the bigger towns and was able to pick up some gifts which are on their way to the US. Travel home was hindered by a partial train strike and so the limited trains meant I was a bit delayed getting back, but that is a known risk of travelling in Italy. Reading this back saying I was only a train ride away from home in Italy still reads like a dream
Research update!
I am helping my collaborators in Spain revise a paper, the first submission was rejected. ☹
My research is moving a bit slower than I would like but I am starting to make progress. (the less technical people can skip this next bit). I have been able to successfully reconstruct a wavefront aberration given the Zernike gradients extracted from a set of Hadamard patterns. Because, this works, I should be able to predict the aberrations and for precorrection of the light patterns. But I now need to write this up and then start designing an experiment to try it out.
I am also helping with a project utilizing a complex holographic phase mask to determine the wavefront. This would be used as an alternative to a Shack-Hartmann sensor.
You can find the first newsletter from the project on concise-project.eu and also look for us on LinkedIn.
I loved the update. Sounds like you are having fun. Keep the them coming.