June 13, 2008
Washington, D.C. - Four members of the Georgetown University men's lacrosse team - rising juniors Andrew Brancaccio (Chevy Chase, Md./Georgetown Prep), Barney Ehrmann (Baltimore, Md./Gilman), Scott Kocis (Huntington, N.Y./Huntington) and Chris Schuville (Lloyd Harbor, N.Y./Cold Spring Harbor) - left the United States last week, traveling to Italy, where they will spend a month taking classes in Florence. During the course of their visit to Italy, the players will send weekly updates to www.guhoyas.com, talking about their experiences in the country and their classes. Kocis provides the first Journal from Italy: "Andrew Brancaccio, Chris Schuville and myself took a plane out of John F. Kennedy airport in New York on the May 28 to Pisa, Italy. The flight was comfortable and surprisingly empty. We arrived in Pisa about seven hours later and from Pisa, took a short bus ride to Florence. "Barney Ehrmann took a flight out of Baltimore to Rome, and then a train from Rome to Florence. We have a really nice, big apartment that we share with two other students (including Mike Pizzitola. We arrived on a Wednesday and did not have classes until the following Tuesday so it gave us some time to get used to the city. It is a very cool city with lots of cathedrals and historical buildings. Matty McBride (a senior who graduated in May 2008) and his dad were in Florence for a few days and took us all out to an amazing dinner at Il Latina, which is one of the more popular restaurants around. The food was incredible. You don't even need to order ... they just bring it out for you.
"This past weekend we took a trip to the Amalfi Coast, which was awesome. We stopped in Naples on the way, which was a pretty cool city, but only got to stay for about an hour. Then we headed to Maiori, a small town on the Amalfi coast. Our bus ride there was extremely intense. We drove over huge mountains, and for most of the time we were about a foot away from a 1,000 foot drop. Too add on to that, the roads were winding and very narrow, and at times we had to pass other large buses. At one point our bus stalled out and I thought we were done. Girls on the bus were actually crying, it was a scary experience but looking back on it I'm glad I did it because you could see for miles and miles and it looked over the city. "On Saturday, we took a ferry ride to Capri and had a blast. We rented a small boat that took us around the entire Island, making stops at the famous "Blue Grotto," "Green Grotto," and "White Grotto." These are pretty much caves that you can swim in. The water is crystal clear and blue. We swam through a few of the caves and it was great. After a day on the boat, we took a chairlift up to the top of the Capri. This was incredible, it was again very scary but the views were out of this world. Capri was hands down the most beautiful place I've ever seen. At the top of the mountain we got off and took a few pictures. You could literally look over a small (chest high) fence and look down 1000 or so feet to the water. It was amazing. We stopped in Pompei on the way back from Capri, which turned out to be pretty boring, just old ruins. "When we first got to Florence we joined a gym, called Klab, that is out of this world. It has a pretty big weightlifting area, but what hooked us for the 130 euros for the month was the basement, which has a huge hot tub, sauna, steam-room, massage room, and even tanning bed (which I don't think any of us will use). "Maybe for our next journal, we will take pictures of us lifting so the coaches know we're working hard too! I'm off to History of the Mafia. Ciao." |
 
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