For the third part of the 35 Trips project, I (Tom) took a Trip 35 to Italy. I went there on holiday with my girlfriend (Maryam) for her sisters wedding last year:
At the end of August, I went away to a lovely small town in Italy called Petritoli. Petritoli is based around an old palace called the Palazzo Mannocchi, approximately 15 years ago it was turned in to an enormous holiday villa perfect for weddings. Parisa (the bride) lives in Canada and her family are half Irish and half Iranian, and Kolya (the Groom) is half Irish half German, quite a mix of cultures to say the least. So no matter where the location of the wedding was, it going to be a global affair – so why not have it in the beautiful Italian countryside?
I got a flight to Rome, which was the cheapest flight within reasonable travelling distance from Petritoli. I had a few hours to burn in Rome before my train across the country so spent a bit of time trekking through the back streets and taking in the lovely Italian streets. Before this I had never been to Italy before so I was loving it.
After spending half a day in Rome it was train time, I took a train from Rome to Ancona, and then from Ancona to Pedaso, and got picked up in Pedaso and driven through miles of countryside and up a small mountain to the Palazzo. All in all the journey from Rome took about 7 hours – definitely worth it though, as the car rolled up to the town I was amazed by how gorgeous it was.
I arrived Sunday evening and was there until Friday morning, so had plenty of time to explore the town and shoot through lots of film. The town had lots of lovely sights and places to visit, including a crypt, lots of tiny old streets where the locals lived, a printing press which teaches the local children about traditional printing methods, and not to forget the palace section of the town where the guests stayed, full of antiques and gorgeous paintings. I will be posting some colour photos to go alongside the Trip photos very soon, keep an eye out on the blog. To add to the charm of the place we were the only tourists there – everyone outside of the wedding party were all locals who barely spoke English!
The ceremony took place on the Wednesday, and overlooked the countryside – the perfect setting. I won’t go on about the ceremony but it was lovely, if you want to see some shots of it I have some on my website.
Friday came around so fast, and it was time to leave. Me and Maryam got dropped off at Pedaso and there began my epic journey back home. We took a train up to Bologna which took about 5 hours, and we got on separate flights, with mine being a few hours later than Maryam’s.
I stayed in Bologna for that time and explored the City centre, and was mega disappointed to find there was nowhere in Bologna you could get a spag bol! Oh well. The centre was fairly small but nice enough to burn a few hours. The flight was at 8pm… To Copenhagen, where I stopped the night on a sofa and flew back at 9am to Manchester. Copenhagen airport was immense, but it was incredibly expensive – £5 for half a pint of Fosters! I’d at least expect Peroni for that much.
And touchdown in Manchester ended my lovely Trip to Italy. I’d love to go back. I’d also definitely like to shoot with a Trip 35 again, it has the perfect amount of manual settings to allow you to just shoot away. While I love my M2, the Trip 35 is a great point & shoot as a camera on the side to just snap away without worrying about exposures, focus and all the other settings that come with using my M2. It allowed me to focus on my holiday and enjoy myself rather than focusing on taking photos (which can be quite an annoyance to people who aren’t into photography!).
What is the 35 Trips project?
Here at west Yorkshire Cameras we fully believe that photography is for everyone, and that the much-loved Trip 35 from Olympus is a fantastic compact for taking about on your travels with you. We have a small selection of Trip 35’s that we like to send out to people with a roll of film for them to shoot; photographers, creatives, people with interesting life styles – anything that could get nice results. We plan on sending these out to 35 different people to send them on 35 trips (pun most definitely intended).
If you think you could get interesting results to help with this project, get in touch with us on our contact page and we will consider you for the project.