Monday July 10th

We woke up and packed our bags in preparation for checking out. Our Airbnb hosts met us at 9:45 and offered to take some of our bags down to the bus stop. It had been a very pleasant stay and that act of generosity was much appreciated

I went with the car, and when Sara and the kids arrived down the hill she asked, “did you bring the sandwiches?” We looked at each other, and after looking at the bus schedule she ran back up the hill and returned just as our bus was getting ready to go. So much for staying cool.

We made it to the train station and couldn’t get on the first train, but the second one was only 15 minutes behind. We switched to an Italian train in Ventmiglia. The Italian train was off when we got on and incredibly hot. It took one full stop before the electricity came on and the AC started to run. The ticket machine was not taking my credit cards, so I was almost late returning to our new train.

I also tested how well my international phone plan worked as we cross the border. After restarting my phone it clicked into Italian service with no problems.

We knew we had to switch trains in Savona, so we got off the first train, headed down the stairs to cross to another track, looked at the monitors and realized….we had to go back to the same track! By the time we got back up, the train (same? different? We never really figured it out.) was ready to leave. The AC in the car we picked was dead, so we baked all the way in to Genoa.

Once we left the train in Genoa, we decided to hoof it to our place, which was a “19 minute walk” according to Google. It took a little longer, but the boys picked that because we threw in Gelato if they walked. We went along a very small street nearly the whole way there, staying out of the direct sun. It was still brutal, and we saw some interesting sights (brothel?), but we made it to our place, with a gelato place right across the square!

Ben and I had dinner to ourselves. I had an octopus “burger”, and Ben had a salmon sandwich. He did not like the coke I bought him. We met up with Anson, who found us as we got our food. Ben was super excited to hear the bell at 6pm and to realize that he could actually see the bell swinging!

Now, let’s talk about our Genoa AirBNB. This place is precisely what is bad about Airbnb these days. It’s managed by an impersonal management company that has no flexibility, and is doing the most it can to do the least work possible. They manage your check-in, arrival, and messaging through their own independent portal, including a requirement for you to scan all your passports. I don’t really want scans of our passports just sitting out there on the web on some random third-party server, so I had to spend extra time to watermark all the images before uploading them.

Some preliminary issues

• They don’t give you location or check-in information until two and a half hours before check in. We were traveling for the first couple days without a SIM and so it would have been difficult to get the instructions in the morning before we left.
• The key to the place requires Wi-Fi which for an international traveler may not be easy to get either.
• Their correspondence with us has been overly commercial, trying to hook us into the other services divided by them or their “partners”

And this was before we even got there!

Other Problems

Other things we found out after we arrived

• Mold on bathroom wall
• various internet services were blocked:
  • whatsapp
  • github
  • google voice
• the pictures from AirBNB were old and not reflective of the current state of the place
• The instructions for entering the apartment were not clear.
• no soap provided. No A/C (which was not necessarily expected, but it was really uncomfortable)
• The french windows with the built-in seats below them are quite dangerous for the young ones.
• No salt and pepper, or any condiments. EVERY AirBNB has salt and pepper, cmon!

Tuesday, July 11

• First day of the conference. Mostly bio-related talks.
• Met up with my PhD advisor, Mark, for lunch. Talked tech, sabbatical, and other fun stuff.
• Got a behind-the-scenes tour of the Aquarium where the conference was held. We got to see lots of tanks.
• The welcome reception was really nice, but outside, and really hot.

Sounds like mom and the kids had a blast in cinque terra.

Wednesday, July 12

Day 2 of the conference was great. The focus of the day was more robotics related. Oussama Khatib presented after lunch on Ocean 1K, and Anson presented his work right after; his presentation went well! We got coffee and met Sara and the kids for gelato. Anson and his sister then walked around with me and the kids for a bit, took pictures by the fountain, and then I headed back to the conference for the banquet.

Something I learned today: “A working principle is a disposition”. For more information, I suggest you read the paper.

The banquet was at an impressive estate that appears to be a wedding venue. There were drinks and appetizers, some vocalists sang, dinner, dessert, and then dancing. I went home after dessert, which was served around 10:45, after talking to Nick and Mike.

Surprisingly, it rained overnight.

Thursday, July 13

The last day of the conference went quickly. Kyujin Cho spoke first, and Olga Speck had a plenary talk after lunch. Both were great, and I particularly liked learning about the “biomechanics of plants”. Something I haven’t thought much about, but has a lot of relevance to some of my teaching.

We went to dinner that night as a family. It was a bit difficult, as the kids had not had the restful day I had hoped for. They went to the kids museum and played hard, for far too long…but enjoyed it. I got home and had to deal with discipline issues from tired kids before we could go out. Sara walked them around so I could get 45 minutes of work in before dinner. I met them there, and we gobbled up 3 dishes and 2 appetizers.

We packed that night after a fun and interesting trip to Genoa, in preparation for a busy travel day to Corsica.