Buona sera... Spent the morning in the library reading about the transfer of Hellenistic medicine into Roman culture. Did you know that a famous man named Cato used to prescribe cabbage - used internally and externally(?!?) - as his favourite cure-all for his whole household and slaves? Apparently it worked surprisingly well! Hmm... I think not. Went for a little bit of clothes shopping considering most shops have a January sale on at the moment, but given the ...

Spent an awesome day in the Villa Borghese today... spoilt by the fact I had to read a book on ancient medicine (just kidding - it's actually very interesting!). Finally unpacked my suitcase tonight much to Phil's delight (I'd managed to sprawl my clothes all over the floor in the living room!). Getting down to business tomorrow at the University, although we may have to do a lot of translation considering most of the books we need to read are in either Latin, ...

More museums today... which means more statues, more old coins, and more getting shouted at in Italian for touching things that I'm not supposed to - "non toccare!!!" I'm bored of museums now, so I'm not going to another for at least a week! Had my first ice-cream from one of the famous gelateria dotted all over Rome - delicious! I've also managed to eat pizza every day that I've been in Italy so far, but they have so many different types that I don't...

After a sulky day yesterday for me and the weather; today the rain has stopped... it was 15 degrees today. We finally arranged to see our supervisors at the Universita di Roma - Sapienza (the roman medical school). They were more than delighted to see us and practise their English on us. One of the women is Neopolitan (from Naples) and promises to show us round Pompeii and Herculaneum - our own private tour! We now have multiple museums and excavations to visit a...

Well it's still raining contrary to the weather forcast - not quite as bad as the river situation yesterday though! Not the best day to do sight-seeing unfortunately but still there's plenty to do despite that. Phil wanted to go to the Palazzo Altembs, a museum in central Rome, which was pretty good. The Romans really were obsessed with their statues of torsos, naked gods, and cherubs (strangling geese for some reason?!). After we rushed off to the Trevi Founta...