As I mentioned in my previous post, this Easter I am going to be spending 15 days in Italy. I actually have my university course to thank for this opportunity. I’m going because of something called ‘Study Tour’. This involves deciding on an essay topic that you want to look at, and then travelling to the location associated with this question. Essentially, you’re supposed to come up with a topic that you couldn’t write about unless you really saw things for yourself. For my question, I’ve decided to go to Rome. In a way it’s quite lucky that I wanted to go here, as due to the political situation Egypt has been unavailable for the last few years, and as of this year Turkey is also banned.
As well as simply loving the Romans, I am also a massive movie fan! A dream job would be to be involved in the historical accuracy of films and TV series. Consequently, an obvious choice was to write an essay which someone combined these two loves. I decided to look at whether the film Gladiator is accurate in its physical portrayal of the Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, and whether it is accurate in its depiction of the Emperor Commodus’s interactions with the Colosseum. Romans, gladiators and films – what’s not to love!!!
Obviously this is why I’m going to Italy. There I will be visiting Rome, Ostia, and also Naples to look at Museums and sites etc. An added bonus for this trip is that the University actually gives us some money to do this (although sadly we do also have to contribute a little bit of money ourselves). I’m travelling with a group of four other girls – who in fact happen to be the course mates I’m incredibly close with which is really nice. It’s actually going to be one of the first times that I’ve travelled abroad with a group of people I know incredibly well as normally with my adventures I’ve gone without really knowing anybody at all!
Over the last couple of months we’ve booked our flights, found an apartment in Rome (once again I can’t help but feel so grateful that Hostel World exists) and we’ve created an itinerary of all the places that we want to visit in each of the cities. One of the slightly difficult things about the Italian Museum websites is that they often don’t tell you exactly which exhibits they have, so that will be slightly interesting!
Now everything has been planned out it’s just a case of counting down the days until I can finish term, go home and pack for my next adventure. The last time I was in Italy was with a school trip during my GCSE’s. It’s certainly going to be interesting trying to find our way around the city by ourselves without any help! I have to admit, I’ll also be interested to see if I view the city differently knowing so much more about its history than most of the other places I’ve visited. Whatever happens, I just can’t wait to be abroad and back on another adventure again!
“You get educated by traveling.” – Solange Knowles
A list of everywhere 