Sabbatical is great for, among other things, opening up a lot of freedom to a prof’s schedule that, granted, has a lot of flexibility to begin with.  Even so, the spring break schedules for my university and my kids’ school never ever align, so we jumped at the chance this year to take a big splashy trip to Italy.  In addition to sites I have been able to visit before, we toured through a few towns in Emilia-Romagna that were new to us, except for the many slides of famous buildings that were included in our Renaissance architecture class many, many years ago–but which, in part, inspired the start of this academic career.

Above: base of Le Due Torri, Bologna