Bowdy’s study abroad trip

I don’t have much to add about Monday-Wednesday, we just worked on thesis all day everyday. I have now started on my estimate.

Thursday morning we left for Ravenna for the day. We toured a couple Basilicas and also got to see Dante’s tomb. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) is one of Italy’s greatest poets, best known for The Divine Comedy, especially Inferno, which I read a couple of years ago in school. His work shaped the Italian language and has influenced literature for centuries. I’m not a big reader, but when I had to read Inferno for school I started to begin to like it, and really enjoyed reading throughout the semester. Because of this, seeing his grave was really interesting to me.

Pictured above is inside Saint Francis Church. Under the water is the original floor of the church, dating back to the 5th century. They put goldfish inside to help keep the algae down.

After all of our tours in the city we toured the Trevi office, a company known for its work on dams and other large foundation projects. They walked us through their operations, explaining how they approach complex engineering challenges, and gave us a look inside their warehouses. It was impressive to see how they design and manufacture much of their own equipment. They did some work on the dam in Fort Gaines in 2002, and mentioned that it was right next to Eufaula. Who would have ever thought Id be hearing about Eufaula in Italy! After this tour was finished we traveled back to Urbino for the night.

Friday morning our bus left Urbino at 5 am to head to the Dolomites. Little did I know, this was the start of a trip that will stick with me forever. A trip that reminded me how great our Creator really is. Truly the trip of a lifetime. It was around a 7 bus ride, which was not fun. Once we arrived in the Dolomites, we toured the city and then went to a popular tourist spot- Nova Levante. We spent about an hour here. The pictures I got here almost look fake. We were disappointed that it was foggy and not sunny, but in a way I think it made the experience better.

That night we went to dinner and then checked into our hotels.

Saturday morning we left the hotel pretty early to get a start on our almost 11 mile hike. My Apple Watch said I had 30k steps on Saturday. It was all worth it. There’s not a whole lot to say about the hike other than the fact that it was beautiful. It was also extremely muddy and I messed up my tennis shoes pretty bad.

As you can imagine we were all pretty exhausted after hiking so much, so we had dinner and we straight to bed after.

We woke up early again this morning and did another hike before our long bus ride back to Urbino. Supposedly the trail we hiked on today is pretty dangerous and 5 people have died on it in the past year, they believe it’s from phone usage and not paying attention while walking.

After the hike we took gondola lifts up the very top of a mountain and ate lunch at a restaurant.

That’s all I have for this trip. I have so many more pictures I could add but it would be too many. It was hard to choose which ones to include in the blog. We are now on the bus on the way back to Urbino. It was nice to sit down and rest our feet after walking so much the last couple days, but sitting down for 7 hours on a bus isn’t much better. I will update in a couple days.