Finally home

Well that was harder than expected, as it turns out a lot of places in Turkey, Italy and Greece make it really difficult for you to connect to the internet, and with so much going on with the trip I didn't really have time to make regular posts, so I suppose now that i'm at home I should quickly go over everything that happened in Greece and Italy.

After we left Turkey, we flew to Athens and drove to our hotel where we would be staying for two nights, it was a nice place and it had a view of the Acropolis from both the roof where we ate breakfast and from our rooms. The first day was mostly relaxed, we walked up to the Archaeological museum and had a look at the artefacts taken from Tiryns, Mycenae and Pylos, where we would be going in a few days. The day after that we had a long walk around the city where we saw the changing of the guard, Hadrian's Arch and of course, the Acropolis. Now I hadn't quite expected that i'd have to walk all the way up to the Acropolis, so I was a little thankful for all the walking holidays i'd done with mum and dad before, because a lot of the less experienced travellers in the group seemed to take the walk a lot worse than I did. We looked around for a while before we descended and moved on to the Agora, and then to lunch before heading back to the hotel.

The next day we left Athens and met our new tour guide for Greece, Helen. On a long drive down to where we would be staying near Mycenae, at a town called Tolo, we heard a lot about the mythos surrounding the areas we were driving through and about Tiryns, the site we visited on our way to Tolo. After a spectacular night in our very relaxing hotel in Tolo, we drove back to Mycenae and spent a long while looking around the site and the museum, which was quite useful considering it's one of my main topics for the HSC. We then drove for the rest of the day down to Pylos, where we spent the night. Unfortunately we could not see the palace at Pylos because it had been closed, but we did see a medieval fortress which had been built by the Francs and used during the Turkish occupation of Greece, it was right on the ocean and was quite a spectacular site, especially considering it was so well preserved, as it was used for a long time past it's construction.

The rest of the day was mostly spent driving to the port where we would be catching the Superfast ferry over to Italy. Our tour guide Helen had been excellent in providing useful information about the historical facts and Mythos of the sites we visited, and our driver had done a brilliant job of getting us around quickly and safely in somewhat chaotic streets, so Mrs. Costi had me and Erin thank them on behalf of the tour, before we said our goodbyes to them and went to jump on the ferry. The ferry was a great experience mostly, unfortunately however Jake did get sick again here, but he recovered fairly quickly in Italy and was feeling perfect for the rest of the trip. Other than him being sick the ferry was quite enjoyable, a nice relaxing change from most of the running around the rest of the trip offered, even in the morning there wasn't a great deal considering we had to wait until the ship had docked before we could do anything.

When we arrived in Italy, we got off the ferry and jumped onto another bus, this time without a tour guide as we made our way to Naples to visit the archaeological museum, here we saw a number of mosaics and other artefacts from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the sites we would be visiting in the next couple of days before Rome, and then got back on the bus to make our way to Sorrento, where we would be staying for two nights. After getting relaxed we went out for dinner and as I'd only done so previously close to the border of Italy in Switzerland, I had the chance to try REAL Italian food, and I was certainly not disappointed. After this it was mostly being dragged around while others did shopping before we went back to the hotel to get some rest for Pompeii the next day.

Catching the train the next morning to Pompeii was an interesting experience. The ride was pretty much like any other train ride apart from the spectacular view, it was the buskers that were the most interesting part. Jumping onto the train before it departed, a band of roughly five men began playing loud songs for everyone to hear, and honestly they weren't that bad, some of the people in the group even tipped them before they moved on and began playing on the other side of the train. Arriving at Pompeii I could tell what kind of day it would be from the groans I had become somewhat accustomed to from the others in the group, as had become the catchphrase for our trip; it was leg day, or walking day. For me it was a little different however, as in my group with Mrs. Costi I had been stuck with a map of the site and told to navigate and lead everyone around, it wasn't that difficult as the map was fairly clear, and eventually we made our way to the different sites and finally the amphitheatre for lunch. After this we saw the sites which Mrs. Kerr's group had been looking at before we left and made our way back to Sorrento to rest our (everyone else's) sore feet.

That night in Sorrento was much the same as the previous one, and the next day we set off for Herculaneum, another site which had been destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, and one that had been buried under roughly 20 meters of ash and lava. For a town placed under that, it was surprisingly well intact, and it was so well preserved there was even second stories of buildings and wood remaining from roughly 79 AD. After looking around the site in small groups and learning about the temples or mosaics on the walls of houses which told different intriguing stories, we headed back to the bus and made our way to Rome, our last stay on the trip. That day in Rome we saw one of the biggest sites to see, the Colosseum. It's something I'd always wanted to see up until this point, but I was still absolutely blown away when we saw it, to me it reminded me that no matter how many times you can look at a place in a picture, there's nothing quite like seeing it with your own eyes, I ended up having that feeling a lot in Rome.

The next time I had it of course was a little while later on the way to dinner when we visited Trevi fountain, and of course, threw a coin into it. That night we had time to wander about the area around Trevi, taking pictures, shopping and getting gelato if we wished, and this time I actually did some shopping there, picking up a painting for myself along with a few other trinkets. After that we went back to the hotel and slept to get ready for the next day which again would be leg day. Our first stop on our last day was the Vatican, and we had quite a surprise when we got there, we learned that the Basilica, what we'd planned to see, was closed, but we got to see something a little better, the pope. Driving around the square and waving to everyone, we actually ended up rather close, at one point only about ten meters from the pope himself, not quite an experience I figured I'd have when I left on the trip. After this we made our way to Piazza Navona where we ate lunch before we moved on to the Pantheon and back to Trevi for a bit of last minute shopping, then it was back to the hotel for the final preparations to come home.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful in terms of things we saw, it was all the usual routine for me, go to the airport, go through all the checks, jump on a plane to Dubai, get off, get back on, and then the long haul home. I was quite lucky on that flight though to get quite a lot of sleep, and when I made it home I wasn't that tired, which helped with jet lag. Now I've been relaxing at home for a couple of days and it's only starting to sink in that I'm both glad to be home but upset that it's over at the same time. I had such an incredible experience seeing all these places, and the fact that I got to experience all this with friends made it even better, my trip to Turkey, Greece and Italy with school was a fantastic journey, and one I won't forget for a long time.