Great pic! Glad you had a nice trip.
The trip began with six days in Warsaw to attend (and deliver a presentation in a session on
Ptolemaic coinage) at the International
Numismatics Congress, held at Warsaw University. That was fantastic. Weather wasn't so great but Warsaw was fun and the
INC went off with few hitches. Always
good to renew contact with colleagues and the leading scholars of ancient
numismatics and meet new ones including very smart younger numismatists giving presentations related to their Ph.D. research, etc. One of the highlights of making a new contact for me was getting to meet Ed Snible. There was also a special visit to the Royal Castle's coin cabinet on my last day there. The National Museum in Warsaw is an *astonishing* art
collection and even has some
Ptolemaic coins, too.
Followed that with five days in
Rome, the first few spent walking about the usual sights of ruins and absorbing the spectacular
Vatican Museums (which includes a visit to the Sistine Chapel), walking up over 300 steps to the very top of the dome of St.
Peter's on a clear sunny day, and culminating with a visit to the coin
collection of the Apostolic
Library of the
Vatican to view and record data on many of their
Ptolemaic coins, hosted by invitation of the curator, Eleanora Giampiccolo.
The last
leg was another five days in the Naples
area which included the archaeological excavation sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum and then into the city to see the
MANN, the Duomo, and 'subterranean' Naples, a complex of ancient underground aqueducts and cisterns.
After almost three weeks traveling it's
good to be back
home but I'd be happy to return to any of those places as there would be
plenty more to do and see. The most surprising city was Warsaw, which exceeded my expectations.
And I took a *lot* of pictures
I will be putting more pictures of highlights of the trip onto my instagram. Rather than post that link in this report please just message me here if you wish to check it out.
PtolemAE