26 Jul 1997 Made a few half-hearted attempts to find a hotel or hostel, but at 12:45 in the night, believe me, it is difficult. I went after a few rucksack-carrying chaps but they were going to the airport. Taxis offered to take me to an ostello; I decided it was safer to stay in…
25 Jul 1997 Friday. I got up at leisure, had a decent if not satisfying breakfast, and set off for the sights. At the breakfast table two Italian girls asked how old I was – you know, as if to say you ought to be with your parents. I said 25 and they said I…
24 Jul 1997 Nel and I decided to do Vesuvius the next morning. After a horrid breakfast that I couldn’t finish, we set off for Ercolano to get the bus. As usual, public transport was not conveniently timed. We waited for a few others to collect, and eventually five of us shared a taxi: Nel,…
23 Jul 1997 Left around 8:30am this morning on a train from Rome to Naples, a journey of ~2.5 hours. The route passed through scraggly mountains and little stations. The stations here are very low – about a foot high – making use of all the steps on the train doors. Somewhat like village stations…
22 Jul 1997 Rome, day 2: Vatican was first on my list. The queue was luckily on the shaded side of the city walls, and moved fast. I was in by 9:30 am. I hired an audio guide – a real smart move, as I discovered later. Without it the tour would not have been…
20th July 1997 The train got into Rome at 21:05. Setting about finding the YH, I felt something I hadn’t felt in Venice: safe. No tension about the dark. The metro and buses were bustling at that hour and people were friendly, going out of their way to point me to my stop. The YH…
Train from Venice to Rome 15:20 – 21:05, 20th Jul 1997On the train south: after Bologna the countryside was uncannily like Maharashtra – green and hilly, the farms and houses more like India than England. Sunflower fields. The whole train journey was about 5.5 hrs, and I didn’t once fall asleep, alternately writing this letter…
Milan en route Venice 20 Jul 1997 Need to change trains at Milan: I killed some hours walking to the YH, but found it had shut for the morning. I did not yet have a reservation for staying the last night on the return trip, but I thought I’d figure something out later – this…
Foreword 02 Apr 2026 These are from 31 pages of handwritten notes from July 1997, written across the trip itself – in hostel common rooms, on trains, on a station floor at 2am. I was 25, living in Reading UK, working for ICL on a project called OpenPAS. I’ve always loved train journeys since I…
5th May 1997 We didn’t get started until 12:30 in the afternoon, which meant the whole walk would be a race against the last bus. The bus dropped us where the main road crosses the Ridgeway, above Avebury village. By that point I was so sleepy I could have happily stayed on for a round…
