Day 4: Wednesday 24th October

Thanks to Dan Conlon, Serge Savva, Jackson Buckler and Alex Manson for Wednesday's blog.

Yes!! A lie-in! Mr Allen said we could get up half an hour later this morning as we weren't leaving until 8.30am. I've really grown to like these sweet croissants we get at breakfast. Luckily we all packed last night so it was really easy to get out of the hotel and onto the coach.

We made it to our restaurant for lunch quite early which was great because we got to relax and chill out for a little bit without having to worry about going up another set of steps! The hotel we stopped at had a beautiful garden with an outdoor seating space, a fish pond with a bridge and a small playground with swings and a slide. The lunch was lovely whilst the dining room was very ornate, particularly the chandeliers. Apparently one of the other families having lunch told Mr Allen we were the best behaved school party they've ever seen! That put all the teachers in a really good mood.

The journey from lunch to Monte Cassino to visit the cemetery was pretty quick.  Mr Thomas had already given some of us a little talk about it, but we got a lot more from him about the battle, the high level bombing and the monastery.  The German army lost 20000 soldiers during the battle, but the Allies lost 55000 men and women. We had some time to ourselves to look around the cemetery - it was really sad to see how young a lot of the soldiers were, I saw lots who were only 18 or 19 years old. I was amazed at how many different countries the soldiers came from - New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India as well as Great Britain.

Just before we left Mr Allen got us together and we had some time to reflect on what we had seen and what we felt. Then he said a prayer before we quietly got back onto the bus to continue our journey to Sorrento.

Getting into Sorrento itself was quite an experience - the roads were really narrow and bendy, they reminded me of the journeys up to ski resorts where you're scared to look out of the window because the drop down is so steep! Our driver was brilliant though and got us to the Hotel Ascot without any fuss, earlier than expected so we were able to go out and explore a little bit of the town with the teachers before heading off to bed. Tomorrow we're going to see Pompeii, which is one of Mr Allen's favourite places to visit; I can't wait!