School Trip In A Nutshell: Italy edition

This year, our chosen school trip was to Italy. It was a chance for all the students to see a lot of the things that we have been learning in class throughout the year. The trip was 8 days total including both of out travel days.

As far as hotels go, our plan was to stay at three different hotels. Our first hotel was in Florence, which we would be staying in for two nights. Our second hotel would be in Rome. We stayed in Rome for three nights. And finally, our last two nights were to be spent at a hotel in Naples.

The transition between hotels was something I found to be a little bit difficult for me and so did other students because most of us are used to staying at one hotel for the duration of our trips, but it was different this time. This time we were constantly on the move so you had to work a little harder to keep everything packed and ready to just grab and go. I think in the end everything ran smoothly with the occasional switching rooms here and forgotten items there, but other than that I don’t think we had any problems with the hotels. The rooms were all decent. The last two hotels had pretty big rooms and the service wasn’t bad either considering that they had so many of us bothering them about problems with the wifi and our key cards.

Our first day was a travelling day and possibly the most tiring day throughout the whole trip. Our plan was to meet at the airport at 6:30 in the morning where we would be heading to Rome. We spent a few hours in the airport making sure everyone was checked in and all ready to go then we boarded our plane that would take us to Rome. After we arrived in Rome, we spent a little while collecting our luggage and making sure we have everything then we got on our bus that would be taking us to Florence. On the bus they gave us two sandwiches for our lunch. We arrived in Florence in the evening and we made a short stop before heading to our hotel. We arrived there, had dinner then went up to our rooms.

On the second day, we took a short tour in Florence first then we headed to Pisa to see the leaning tower as well as the church. I enjoyed being at Pisa a lot because it wasn’t rushed. We took a tour with our guide first so that she could tell us all the historical facts about Pisa then we had free time to explore on our own and take pictures by the leaning tower. We spent the night again in Florence that day.

For the next 3 nights, we stayed in Rome. On the third day, we had breakfast then checked out from our hotel in Florence and took a bus to Rome where we would be taking a city tour to see all the important piazzas of Rome. After our tour with the guide we went to see Fontana di Trevi or the Trevi Fountain, which unfortunately was under construction so we didn’t get to see much of it, but it was beautiful nonetheless. The next day, day 4 was spent in Vatican City. Vatican City was absolutely beautiful. We got to see all the paintings and the hand painted artwork on the ceilings and the walls. We also got to see the School of Athens painting as well as the Virgin Mary holding Jesus. After we were done at the Vatican City, we went and had lunch at a restaurant where Mr. Mohammed played a beautiful piece on the piano. We finished up at the restaurant, then we went back on the bus to go for bowling and pizza in the arcade. Our last day in Rome was spent in the Colosseum. We visited the amphitheater and saw where the people used to go to watch gladiators fight to the death and also to watch animal games. The theater was huge and it was in an oval shape where the seats went all around and the stage was in the middle. After our guide was done giving us a tour of the Colosseum, we hit the shopping mall. The shopping mall we went to was called Europa 2. It was a huge mall and most of us spent a lot of money in it. After we finished shopping, we went back to the hotel and had a study hall to catch up on our work then we went to have dinner. At dinner, everyone sang me Happy Birthday and everyone gave me a ton of gifts, but the highlight of my night – the highlight of my entire trio for that matter- was when my dad surprised me with a cake. That was truly a birthday I would never forget. We spent the night in Rome, then we headed to Naples in the morning.

These last 2 days were spent in Pompeii and the beautiful Capri. Both were amazing and we got to go to the beach on ride a boat in Capri, which was a beautiful sight. I went on a lift as well to see the whole island of Capri from the top and that was probably my favorite sight on the entire trip.

The next morning was a sad morning because we would be leaving Italy and going back to Cairo. We went to the airport and headed back to Cairo.

Overall, I thought this trip was a huge success. I found it to be very well organized and planned out. We saw everything we learned about in class and it was education but not boring which is something that I found was never balanced in any of the other trips. All the trips I’ve been on have been either too boring or not educational enough. The students enjoyed this trip beyond measures. I think that we had maybe one too many shopping days, but I’m not complaining. It was a very relaxed trip as well, none of the students felt rushed about anything, so I would definitely go back there to repeat this trip again.