What are awesome and rhyme with "hassles?"

CASTLES.

Two weeks ago some friends and I went to Trento up north.  We took a 10:30 train to get there at 12:30, and unfortunately everything closed at about 5 so we only had a few hours there.  However, the main site in Trento is the Castello del Buonconsiglio, whose name literally means "good advice."  Here's some good advice: visit the Castello del Buonconsiglio.

 Museums and castles are both pretty cool, right?  Castello del Buonconsiglio is a museum in a castle.  That's like eating a big cake and discovering a steaming hot pie inside. 

They had mummy feet.  I don't know how you manage to acquire mummy feet without the rest of the mummy, as all of the mummies I've browsed on eBay have been package deals, but I wasn't going to ask.

The moat at Buonconsiglio is drained, and now a grassy lawn you can lounge around in.  I can't imagine why they did this as it leaves a real gap in their defenses.  I don't know how they're going to hold the castle the next time the Visigoths invade if that moat isn't in good shape.

Trento also has a pretty neat archeological dig beneath one of its central piazzas where you can see the original Roman roads of Tridentum.

 We also saw the local church, but at this point that goes without saying.  We ate and went home, and that was the last castle I visi-

 HOLD THE PHONE.

What do we have here?

May 5th was my birthday, and that Sunday two friends took me to the town of Imola to check out the Rocca Sforzesca in nearby Imola (a half-hour away by train).  In other words, my friends got me a castle for my birthday.

I should mention the really interesting time I had on the actual night of the 5th.  Two Italian brothers I met through a language exchange group invited me and three other friends to their apartment that night for a Cinco de Mayo party.  Six nations were represented between everyone there: four Americans, four Italians, a Brit, a Russian, a German, and an Austrian.  We had a great time and negotiated a few treaties and afterwards let's just say I drank a lot of things for free and leave it at that.

I'll soon post about BCSP's trip to Tuscany last week, which was wonderful.  We are in exam season right now and I've done well so far with the hardest left to go.