Viva Italia

So, after some 24 hours or so of travelling from Charleston and the usual joy of having one day bleed into another that accompanies overnight flights across the Atlantic, we finally arrived in Il Ciocco, the hotel here in Barga where the conference is to be held. Suffice to say, the scenery is fantastic - the hotel itself is situated some way up a hillside affording stunning views of Barga and the surrounding hills and mountains. Yes, mountains as we are close to the Apuan Alps. It's quite a new experience for me to look around and see snow capped mountains in the distance but i'm certainly enjoying it. To get to Barga from Pisa we took the train - a little over an hour's journey through some similarly wonderful scenery. You can certainly tell that it's a different region of the world.

Since arriving, its pretty much been a combination of science at the conference mingled with trying to sleep off the jet lag as well. I'm still kind of groggy and not 100% sure whether i'm coming or going quite yet. Hopefully it'll be the end of it today. The conference itself has been good so far - the chance to meet and chat with some of the bigger names in this specific field. But when you've got that scenery outside, it's quite distracting to say the least. Anyhow, having now digested breakfast, i guess it's time for me to head downstairs to the morning lectures. Fun, fun, fun. Hopefully there'll be some of the Italian coffee to keep us from nodding off to easily....