Saint Nicholas College, Dingli Secondary School – Rome Day Trip – 26th May 2023

Last week the Italian Department gave the opportunity to 49 different students that study Italian at school to travel for a day trip to Rome. The idea behind it was for students to immerse themselves into the Italian culture and practice the language in the Italian capital city. This was obviously a huge responsibility but luckily it was successful!

For some students it was their first time visiting Rome and for others it was the first time that they had ever travelled abroad. Although we had a couple of hours of delay we still enjoyed it.

Everyone was gathered at the airport at around 5.30am and check in was done for every single one of us. We waited for a few minutes more and after that the teachers guided us to start this memorable day! We were supposed to head off to Rome at about 7.30am, but we were delayed for 2 hours.

We arrived at Rome at around Noon. As we arrived we all headed to catch the bus that luckily was still waiting for us and took us straight to the center of Rome.

Firstly, we visited the Colosseum and then walked to Altare della Patria. As quite some time had passed the teachers guided us to the restaurant, were we ate some typical Italian food. The choice was between pizza and pasta, ending the lunch with gelato.

After lunch, we continued our journey in Rome. It was much better to walk around as it wasn’t as hot as it was in the morning. Although we didn’t have much time we still visited a variety of Roman Attractions and World Heritages including the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Castel Sant’Angelo,Piazza di Spagna and the Vatican. All of these places were packed with people as Rome is a city which is visited from tourists from all over the world. We ate other Italian delicacies such as the traditional maritozzo and some of us managed to find time to buy some souvenirs.

Unfortunately then our trip was almost over and at around 7pm we hopped on the coach to take us back to Fiumicino to start our flight back to Malta. Just as we arrived there we got informed that we have another delay. From 9.10pm the flight was transferred to 10.55pm. We still enjoyed our time at the airport. However we had a further delay. Everyone was quite tired so we all just sat down until our gate was called and we started boarding. We arrived in Malta at around 2.20am.

In conclusion, all this wouldn’t have been possible without our outstanding teachers. A big thank you goes to Mr. Vella, Mr. Azzopardi, Ms. Valentine, Ms. Agius, Ms. Gatt and Ms. Scerri who made sure that although we had several hours of delay, we still enjoyed this memorable day.

Written by Yasmine Cutajar of year 10.1