By community correspondent Gaby Mills

At 3.40am on 7th April, forty-two tired yet excited people met outside the Surbiton Assembly Rooms to begin their journey to Italy. Everyone had been looking forward to this trip for months, and it can be safely said that no one was disappointed when they finally returned home on April 14th.

Spending three days in Rome, the girls – supervised by five teachers – were exposed to masses of information on Roman culture. They visited the Trevi Fountain, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Roman Forum as well as many other famous ancient buildings.

On Saturday the group drove to Sorrento – stopping at the Monte Cassino monastery and driving past the Bay of Naples on the way. The following day, the sight-seeing started all over again; on Sunday there was a day excursion to Pompeii, on Monday another one to Herculaneum.

Unfortunately, the scheduled trip to the island of Capri had to be cancelled after it was discovered that there was going to be torrential rain on Tuesday. However, the teachers saved the day and took the girls to Paestum and got them a nice pizza lunch instead.

It was a wonderful trip, and everyone certainly learned a lot from the different sites and the added knowledge of the accompanying teachers – thank you to everyone who went!