The Creperie

On Saturday night, Garrett and I joined his family for dinner at the Creperie to celebrate his parent's 30th Anniversary. The Creperie is a fancy restaurant that focuses, shockingly, on crepes, and they do quite a good job at making them. I usually prefer sweet crepes - well, basically, chocolate ones, however the savoury crepes were really quite nice. I had one called Crepe Rozenkranz. It had asparagus, brie and smoked salmon in a creamy cheese sauce. Very delicious. We all finished up dinner with dessert crepes. While I, of course, ordered the chocolate crepes, there was also a raspberry option that looked quite nice too. Here are a few pictures from the event:

Anglesey Abbey

Sunday morning saw us rising early to get Amanda to her charitable relay race through Cambridge. I dropped her off at the race start and met up with Mom and Dad, where we grabbed some coffee and wandered the market for a little shopping. At the race start time, we assembled ourselves alongside the course and waited for Amanda to run by. Here she is!After that, we had a quick lunch at home and then spent the afternoon at the botanical gardens at Anglesey Abbey, a short distance away from Cambridge. Here are some pictures of the gardens:There was a rainbow of dahlias in one garden:There was also a neat birch garden in one section:And a funny statue, that I pretended to share a secret with in the garden:After the Abbey, we returned home and made a nice dinner before Mom and Amanda drove down to London to pick Ray up from his flight back from the U.S. They got home quite late, but Dad and I had already gone to bed!

Grantchester again

Friday was a whirlwind of driving with crazy Italians, flying across Europe and driving around England back to Cambridge. It wasn't that interesting so I won't detail it more than that. Suffice it to say, we were happy when we finally made it back to Amanda and Ray's!

On Saturday, we relaxed at home in the morning and then picked up some groceries for the rest of the week. We made a return trip to The Orchard in Grantchester for one last round of scones and jam and scrumptious sandwiches:Lastly, we visited a farmer's market for some last minute grocery additions and headed home to relax and work in Amanda's back yard. We made a nice, regular North American style dinner to assuage our confused tummies after eating Italian food for a week, and watched a BBC dvd about the planet and the animals on it. After that, we were off to bed!

Oral presentation and Trevi Fountain

On Thursday, I woke up and prepared myself for my oral presentation. I went to the first session of the morning, albeit a little late (however, I did see lots of other people trickling in late, too, so I didn't feel so bad that I showed up after the 8am start time). After the session was done, there was a half hour coffee break in which I took down my poster and put my talk on the conference's computer. I also acquainted myself with the controller for advancing slides and the laser pointer. Then, I sat down to wait through seven talks in my session (the "Antivirals" session) before it was my turn. In the interim Mom, Dad and Amanda showed up and entered the session so they could watch me give my presentation. Finally, it was my turn! I was only a little nervous.

My talk went fairly well, since I made sure I was close to the microphone and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. This had been a problem throughout the conference, since they didn't have a portable microphone that attached to people's shirts. Most people didn't get close enough to the microphone to broadcast clearly to the entire audience. So, I made sure I did that, however it made me feel really trapped in one position, since I couldn't move away from the microphone at all! I guess it went quite well, because I ended up winning a travel award (although I'm not really sure if I won it because of my oral presentation, or my poster...or just randomly).

After the conference, we headed back to the hotel and dropped off my stuff before heading out for lunch in Piazza St Maria in Trastavere. Next, the girls dropped Dad off at the botanical gardens for the afternoon and we wandered off to do some shopping near Piazza Navona and the Trevi fountain. We took some pictures of Trevi fountain, both that afternoon and the next day when Dad went with us. Here they are:
After shopping and exploring, we met up with my supervisor Lorne and Alan, a guy from the conference (also from Edmonton) and had dinner at Piazza Navona. It was a really nice dinner, with delicious wine and some yummy fettuccini alfredo:We were also entertained by this mime, who was really quite funny and came through the patio afterwards to collect some well-earned change:We headed home after dinner to meet up with Dad at the hotel for our last night in Rome.

The Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica

On Wednesday, we went to the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. It took us about 25 minutes to walk over from our B&B to the Vatican. The weather was sunny and promising to be a hot day indeed, but we were dressed modestly as required when visiting the Vatican (ie. shoulders and knees covered). We walked up the main street towards the square and took a few pictures:Once we got closer, however, we started to notice crowds like this:We had to walk through a metal detector just to get into the square, and the main entrance was all blocked off by barricades. It seemed that the Pope was going to make an address, despite the fact that our guidebook said he would be on holidays until later in the fall. Anyway, we decided to stay for a bit and see if he was going to show up before we went to the Vatican Museum. We didn't push into the main crowds, however, and just stayed at the back, but we didn't have to wait too long before something started happening. First, a helicopter flew by. Minutes later, the Pope-mobile drove into the square with the Pope inside, and it drove around the square (on pre-blocked off roadways within the crowd) for several minutes while music played over loud speakers. As well, the Pope was filmed and put on large screens around the square. Here is a picture of the Pope in the crowds:Can you spot him? He's the guy in white! After cruising around the square, the Pope-mobile drove up to the stage at the front of the square and offloaded the Pope. After hearing him talk for awhile (in another language - is he German?) we headed off to go to the Vatican Museum.

Here we are in a courtyard in the Museum:Another courtyard in the Vatican Museum:With some modern art:Inside a fancy room full of marble statues:Statues:View over Rome from a window in the Museum:After the Museum, we went back to St. Peter's square and took some more pictures now that the crowds has dispersed.Next, we went inside St. Peter's Basilica. It was difficult to take pictures in there because it was quite dark, but we managed to get some.After all that walking, we were pretty tired so we headed back to the hotel to rest before I got ready for the conference banquet that night.

The Pantheon and Dar Poeta

As I mentioned, on Tuesday we went to the Coliseum in the morning and got a little wet before buying some umbrellas. We continued on to check out the Pantheon, which wasn't too far away. With Amanda's trusty guidance, we found our way there without any trouble and darted inside just as another rain storm started up. The Pantheon is an ancient building that was used in pagan rituals including animal sacrifices and what not, however it was converted to a Christian temple when Christiantity took over. It's a huge cement dome with a large hole in the roof, through which smoke from ritual fires was able to escape. Currently, the temple holds a number of Christian statues and paintings. It's quite neat inside, although hard to take pictures because it was quite dark.
Here is a picture from the outside. The square is quite nice and has a pretty fountain in the middle.
We stopped for lunch just outside the Pantheon and had a nice meal with slightly more "North American" style food, which gave us a break from some of the different Italian foods we were encountering.
Again, I returned to my conference in the afternoon and also attended another poster session, this one where I stood by my poster and discussed my research with a number of scientists who came by interested. I was quite happy with the interest in my poster and spent nearly an hour and a half talking to consecutive individuals about my project. Not only was I glad that there was interest, but I also garnered some interesting ideas to put to use in my research, so it was quite valuable time spent. After the poster session, my supervisor Lorne came for dinner with my family and we went to a little pizza shop Amanda knew of called Dar Poeta. This place was tricky to find and was the complete opposite of anything touristy, but they had good pizza and a great atmosphere. We had a nice dinner and took this picture afterwards: