Trip to Highlands (2):Skye

It was a beautiful day when we went to Skye. Skye has always been known as the 'misty island' due to the lack of good weather, but what we saw was a clear blue sky there.

From Portree, a small main town of skye, we took a taxi for 15 minutes to a hiking trail, 'The Old Man of Storr'. 'The Old Man' is actually a vertical stone on top of one of the hills formed by glaciers many years ago.

The climb up wasn't too bad especially since it is a proper path trail. It got a lot steeper near the stone though. However, it was a rewarding journey. The view from the top was simply breathtaking.

Trip to Highland (1): Highlander Castle

As exams are finished and the weather being friendly and warm, we decided to go for a trip north, to the Scottish highland.

One of our interesting stops was Eilean Donan Castle, a castle in a small island just in the middle of a loch (lake, Gaelic). The castle is still well preserved, although not so big. I feel that it just fits nicely with the surrounding.

The sky weather was extremely pleasant and thus we could get a good view of the castle. From the back of the castle, we could see the loch and the surrounding land.

Spring Sunshine

It has been warm these few days. People go out and bask in the sun. More smiling faces as opposed to the gloomy winter mood. Spring has come. It is interesting as people appreciate sun more here given the average cloudy day and the winter long nights. I would not say people appreciate sun back there. Perhaps because sun is always there and always hot as ever. Perhaps it is in our human nature to lose sight of what we always have and longing for what we don't.

Even now as Edinburgh is located way up north, the daytime gets longer and longer. There's still some traces of light after 9 pm at night. And this is not even the peak yet. I wonder how it will be like in mid June when we have the most sunshine of the year. The first picture here was taken in the afternoon. The second one after 9 pm. No Flash.

Trento

The Italian weather stays sunny most of the time we were in Trento. The meeting place was located on a hill and has to be reached by cable car.

The cable car, however are not always available. In case of strong winds, they provided alternative bus transport. At times, some of us had to wait for the cable car to be operational.

From the workshop place, we could see Trento and its surrounding mountains. The view was lovely. That's why the building is named 'centro panorama', which means center for surrounding view.

MIlan

We had two hours to go around the city center. Fortunately, the weather was good. It is contrast with the gloomy Edinburgh. Being more of an industrial city, Milan seems to be more crowded than average italian towns.

The duomo in the city center was a majestic piece. I especially like the many spikes in the roof. It's somewhat similar to the cathedral in Barcelona.

The main shopping center, Vittorio Emanuele also has a grand feel on it. It looks like they just put a roof on top of a large street and convert it into shopping mall.

Vulcano

Just came back from a weekend away in Italy. Had some time to check out Milan. I never went into the city before although I took flight several times from there. Since we arrived late at night, there wasn't much of a sightseeing to do. We were also lucky to find a good restaurant for dinner.

I looked to see if there is something different about the pizza here, and tried Vulcano. It's just egg and salami with standard cheese and tomato. However, it does look according to its name. Since the egg is half cooked, once it is pressed, the yellow will stream down like a volcano. Indeed an interesting name.

Visa: Approved

Yay, finally got a schengen visa to conclude my studies in Italy. And plus it's free since it's a student visa. I initially was worried because the processing time announced in the website was about two weeks for Indonesian and I didn't have that much of time. Also I heard from seniors that they didn't get schengen visa, only Italian visa.

Thankfully, after just a bit more than one week I got the approval. Well, with this I can attend EuMI gathering and start planning to go for a break somewhere in europe after the coming exams.