Milan, Italy 11.30.07

Our last stop before we fly back to the States. Came into the industrial yet elegant Milan train station.


The Galleria, which has spawned so many imitations.

Duomo di Milano

up on the roof

And that's it!

Back to work on Monday. What an adventure! I'm glad we kept the schedule so intense, or we might have drifted into thinking this was a vacation (which we could really use now, ironically). Every hour of the day, for 70 days straight, was filled with something new and exciting. Even this blog was a way to sort through the thousands of images and collate my thoughts and lessons.

The architecture and cities we visited were only a part of the value gained on this trip. Anyone who has traveled understands that absorbing different cultures, languages, people, food, and traditions broaden one's perspective of the world. It's this larger understanding of who we are and where are in time which will affect everything I do from here on, not only as an architect, but as a person. Mark Twain's well quoted quote describes it well, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.."

Thank you to Brooks Cavin and everyone apart of the Fellowship who helped make my "vegetating" dream more than a reality. It has been an incredible learning experience, and with luck will continue with further travels. Thanks to Mom+Dad for coming to visit us in Prague and Vienna. Thanks to LMSa and Group4 for not firing us. And countless gratitude will be continuously paid to my wife Asti, for whom without this trip would have not been nearly as eventful.

Aloha