LOOSH – FIRENZ4EVA

Florence has been pretty amazing. It’s definitely kept up with the times better than Rome and Athens – and it is a much more attractive destination for your common garden-variety tourist because of this. However, in everywhere we have gone, including Firenze, I am absolutely sure that the pigeons all have lung cancer from the plethora of second hand smoke that loiters in all public areas. This is really the only thing that detracts from the pleasure of wandering through the avenues around Il Duomo.

While we have been meandering through Florence, a slightly malicious cough has been casually meandering through our group, not blaming anyone in particular; cough Will Anson and Alex cough. Hopefully it won’t be able to survive the je ne sais quoi of Beaucaire, so we can enjoy our Heritage in peace.

Will McKenzie — Florence

In Rome, I randomly met one of my friends that I know from Wellington and we discussed our classics tours that each of us were on, and she had told me that she had been to Florence and it was so lovely, and that compared to Florence, Rome was very dirty. All I had to base cleanliness on at that time was Athens, which was muuuuuch dirtier than Rome, so I was rather shocked to find that she thought Rome was dirty. So heading to Florence I was very excited to see a cleaner place, and I was not disappointed. Florence has been my shortest proper stop so far, but by far my favourite. The streets are much cleaner, though there is still the occasional poo smelling spots along the way. I really loved the layout of the city and the streets and nature. It is so much quieter than Rome, in that I slept with my balcony doors open but did not even hear a sound. I was really disappointed I didn’t get to see Michelangelo’s David, but the trip was definitely worthwhile since I go to go to Il Duomo which was amazing. I really want to come to Florence again and stay longer, as it was such a beautiful city.

Nicholas Poulsen

Greece: The 23 hour flying time from Auckland to Sydney, then Sydney to Dubai was pretty bad although that’s just part of the experience. After a 15 hour flight we touched down in Athens. The first day in Athens we walked to Oemonia square and saw the “not so intimidating,” imperial guards. They reminded of ducks in away. The skirts and pom-poms on their shoes didn’t change my view a whole lot on the overall appearance of the guards. After checking into the Hotel Economy we went off to explore the area around our hotel. Later that night we walked up Mount Lykevittos and saw amazing views of the city at night.

The next day we took a 2-3 hour bus trip to Delphi. Here we saw our first taste of classical architecture and historic ruins. The hazy weather added to the mysterious feel of the place. Delphi was the home of the oracle. After visiting Delphi, the next day we went to the Acropolis. It was amazing, looking out over the city it made me think what Athens would’ve been like all those years ago. In our last day in Greece we went to the historic city of Corinth and Mycenae, the home of Agamemnon before he sailed out to conquer Troy. From Mycenae we headed to the overnight ferry and set out on a voyage to Ancona in Italy then on to Rome.

Rome: We spent a week in Rome. During our visit in Rome we saw a lot, the colourful walls in the hostel made the trip very exciting. Day one; we walked around Rome, visited churches such as Santa Maria Maggiore and even managed to fit in a night walk to the colosseum. The second day we continued you visit to the many churches in Rome, the baths of Diocletian and the temple of Ares the avenger, built by Augustus after his three triumphs. That night we visited the Trevi fountain and continued to stroll around Rome. On the third day we went to Tivoli and Hadrian’s villa, probably the best ruins in Rome I thought. On the second to last day the weather turned bad but that didn’t stop us from seeing the colosseum and the Roman forum. We visited Ostia on the forth day, probably one the best things about the whole trip, not like Pompeii in Ostia you could get lost and walk among the ruins.

In Pompeii you only really stick to the main roads. Saint Peters and the Sistine chapel were another highlight of the trip, as everywhere you looked there was something to see. The view from the top of Saint Peters’ dome was awesome! During our last day in Rome we visited the famous ruined city of Pompeii. Even though Joseph Youl and I took a slight detour around the city, we still managed to see a lot and we did find the House of the Faun before everyone else. We left Rome and headed towards Florence.

Florence: Florence was probably the cleanest and nicest city out of the trip so far. The hotel was a little plain but it was still comfortable. After checking into the hotel we walked around Florence saw Il Duomo and the markets. One thing I liked about Florence was the history of the city. The city seemed as though not much had changed from when it was the super power of Italy during the Renaissance. The day trip to Pisa was cool although the leaning tower of Pisa was too short to climb up, unlike the dome at Saint Peters. Florence was a lot more relaxed then Rome and Athens. The free time was awesome and when Ben, Loosh and I climbed to the top of Il Duomo’s dome was even more awesome! The views from the top of the dome made me feel like I was living in middle-aged Florence. After visiting Santa Croce and many other churches in Florence as well as climbing to the top of two hills to see the panoramic views of the city we left Florence to go to Venice another great medieval city. The Rialto Bridge and Saint Mark’s Square were the two great sights we saw and again I could relate to Assassin’s creed. We left Venice on an over night train and we headed to the French town of Beaucaire…

Message from Ms Haywood

Thanks for all the news boys, it makes fantastic holiday reading. Keep it up! Great to see some of my current and former students taking advantage of their knowledge of the Classical world. Now I'm looking forward to hearing from my Roman Art students - come on, Doughty, Hart and Brealey, what did YOU think of the Pantheon, Colosseum, etc.?
Ms H

Guy Hart’s ‘Naples is the definition of Romance’

After days of lounging around the hostel and doing no exercise at all, we decided to take a train ride to Naples.  After the train adventure, we got to experience the luscious and clean environment of Naples.  The amount of Moroccans selling the same beautiful souvenirs as all the others made the whole experience of Naples superb.  But it wasn't the magical city of Naples we were there for; it was the Museum, which held some of the most coolio statues I've ever seen.  The highlight of the Museum for me was definitely the mosaics as some of the ones from the House of the Dancing Faun, I had studied last year in Classics.  I think everyone's favourite part of the Museum was the brothel mosaics and sculptures ;) We saw lots of naughty things such as the male genitalia; the penis huehue.

 

On the same day, we departed from Naples on another train, and headed to Pompeii where we saw some old stuff.  While on the train, we got to enjoy some fantastic pull-ups by an Italian with the best mullet in the history of swaggers.  There was also some lovely ambient music coming from a swag lord's mobile.  It really did set the romantic mood of the train.  After all of this, we rolled on into Pompeii, ready to see some cribs!  The houses were all very ruined but still very radical like Logan.  We only saw 2 of the main houses, as the House of the Vetti and House of Pansa were both closed due to no reason (typical Mexicans).  House of mysteries was probably my favourite as it was fabulously awesomely cool.  It had the Dionysiac frieze (not mr. freeze from our favourite batman movie) and it was BIG.  We also saw the actual brothel, which still held the actual beds.  It's nice to know that 2000 years ago, some people had special hugs :O Anyway, fun was had. Reid smells and Ben is getting a tan! 

Jamie Keay’s cooking with Keay

So two days ago we went for a day trip to Ostia Antica and its was great, after wondering around with the group for a while, i found myself falling behind with a friend this quickly turned into us becoming completely lost, we ran through the labyrinth of ancient walls and ruins upon ruins. After being lost for about 5mins we turned it into a game which we called our 'French expedition', the group was nowhere to be seen we climbed to the top of the ruins to look from a vantage point and we found a small group of boys from our trip also lost, we had a disagreement on which way to run so we quickly separated again and ran our own ways. We were given a task at the start of our journey through Ostia to find as many ancient toilets as we could, we found some cool ruins on our way round while on the hunt for ancient toilets such as a bathing complex and some old columns still standing, an epic rock like Pride rock from the lion king but the top find has to go to the mosaic of a man and a women performing a sexual activity from the rear.

 

The next day we went to Naples and Pompeii, the Naples museum was amazing the statues were incredible and had been preserved so well! the statue of Hercules was the key piece of them all for me, but Naples itself was disgusting, the smell of the garbage was terrible, there was rubbish everywhere you looked and almost everyone we saw was smoking, Pompeii however was a different story entirely it was great, the air was fresh and sun was high in the sky, everything was looking to make for a great day, and i was excited for exploring the place we had done so many translations about back in 3^rd form latin. After looking around and seeing the theatres and the rest of the city all in such good shape, we went to enjoy the ancient brothel and enjoy we did. 

Reid Towers' Haiku Blog

after a long train

ride we arrived in ostia

it was quite ruined

 

ostia had stuff

such as temples and big walls

it was really cool

 

after we got back

we saw the colisseum

it was mind blowing

 

sadly it rained

i forgot my coat damn it!

it was still awesome

 

so far it has been

really amazingly rad

can't wait for Florence.

Jonathan Hart — Rome

       As we are about to leave for Florence tomorrow, I am beginning to contemplate how the second phase of our journey has been.  To be honest, I think that many of us were quite willing to leave the grotty streets of Athens for a different city.  For an equally large number of us, Rome was a city which had to live up to very high expectations.  Speaking for myself, it has certainly not failed to live up to these expectations at all.

 

After a somewhat relaxing and tranquil ferry ride across to Italy, and after using an Italian train toilet which, to my horror, emptied itself directly onto the track, we arrived in Rome on Tuesday evening ready for bed.  Having anticipated that 'Youth Hostel' meant a repulsive dump full of bandits and infectious diseases, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a dry, warm bed and a clean bathroom. 

 

The next morning we launched straight into our tour of Rome's major sites, including some of the most beautiful churches in the world.  Other highlights were the Roman Forum Trajan's Column.  The latter is a depiction of many scenes, some separated by pictures of trees, on a sort of comic strip which winds its way up the column.  We briefly visited several museums (in which I forgot to turn off my flash – whoops) before moving on to Hadrian's Villa in the afternoon. 

 

An amazingly vast private residence, the Villa provides an excellent way to spend an afternoon; our wander exposed us to a huge variety of structures and some fascinating history.  We concluded the day with a night tour of the Colosseum and everything we had seen during the day, which look surprisingly different at night. 

 

Thursday was our big church exploration day, and the interior and exterior of seemingly every church in Rome is mind-blowingly beautiful.  The variation of each is just as astounding, and just as we found ourselves thinking that one church's splendour was unbeatable, Mr Buckingham would rush us off into another even better one!  My favourite was St John Lateran Basilica; the combination of breathtaking paintings and sculptures, along with a humungous dome made it a true standout.  We learnt that the front doors had been pinched from the Senate-House at some stage. 

 

Other events that day included a visit to the Pantheon, a temple which is rectangular on the outside but circular on the inside.  The Pantheon also possesses the world's largest unreinforced dome. 

 

On Friday, we were yet again blown away by a trip to the Vatican, and more than an hour's queuing was soon forgotten in the amazement of the paintings of the Sistine Chapel and the other artwork in the museums, including a seemingly perfect painting of Raphael.  In the afternoon we visited St Peter's Basilica, which is probably the best church we have seen.  The colonnade around the outside, designed to welcome people in, is constructed so cleverly that if one stands at a certain point, the several rows of columns line up and look as if they are one.

 

Saturday morning saw us use the metro to go to Ostia, an ancient port city of approximately one hundred thousand inhabitants, and we spent a great two hours exploring the ruins.  In the afternoon we visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and St Paul's Without the Walls. 

 

On our last day before heading off to Florence, we visited Naples and Pompeii.  The Naples museum was a highlight in an otherwise filthy and generally unpleasant city, while Pompeii was simply fascinating, and the preserved state of the structures allows a great level of exploration to be carried out.

 

In summary, Rome has been a fantastic leg of the trip; it is a city truly with something for everyone.  I must stop blogging now, as we all need to pack and go to bed!

Until you try...

Well today, the day we went to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa, I decided to purchase a mysteriously branded bottle of brown liquid (presumably fizzy) instead of the safe option of Gatorade/water.
Both turned out to be less than amazing. But it's not all bad - you never know if you never go. I've got to be wiser for the experience, right?

L