Okay.  So, I’ve decided to do some travelling this year, and I’ve settled on a plan which allows me to see a number of beautiful and ancient sites I’ve long wanted to explore, while threading them into a semi-sensible route and even giving the trip a theme.

Starting with the Alhambra in southern Spain, I’m going to see with my own eyes some of the great cities, and some of the truly significant historical and cultural sights of southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, encompassing territory which largely corresponds to the reach of the Roman Empire in the first century CE; hence the deliberately- and solipsistically-ridiculous name of this blog.  For a rough birds-eye view, try this:

This is not a tour of just Roman sights or exclusively of Roman lands and certainly it is not an attempt to explore the whole of what constituted the Empire.  Nor is it only a tour of ruins and temples: the beaches of the Med and the Red Sea, the islands of Greece, the bars of Casablanca will certainly get their fair share of attention too.  But be it the Alhambra, the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Parthenon, the shrine at Delphi, the walls of Dubrovnik, the birthplace of Alexander the Great, the Hagia Sofia, the souks of Beirut, the temples at Petra, the Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, the Casbah at Algiers, the ruins of Carthage, or the walls of Marrakesh… this is a world so rich in great art and architecture, and so deeply connected with the birth and growth of the great civilizations of Europe, the Middle East and Africa that it is a connection to those civilizations, past and present, that I’m hoping to discover.  In the course of finding and exploring those sights of the ancient world I will walk in and hopefully discover a little about the modern one and my place in it, or rather in the many different modern worlds which constitute this unique section of the globe.

Over the next month or so as I plan and prepare for  the trip, which I estimate will take between four and six months, I will be fleshing out the sights and destinations (and budget – a challenge as anyone who knows me will attest) for the trip.  Hopefully, if I get my finger out and do this properly, this website will grow to include maps, photos, links to hostels and tour operators, wiki and journal articles on the places and worlds I’m going to explore, and maybe even a rough itinerary; all before it then turns into a travel journal and a safe cloud-based repository  for thoughts and photos from the trip.

Anyone I know and love is more than welcome to accompany me on any section of the trip which takes your fancy, should you have the time, wherewithal, and patience with me to do so.  Given that I’ll be doing everything from backpacking the hills of Sicily to (hopefully) scuba diving the red sea, there should be something for everyone :-).  So drop me a note here or to joel.s.adams@gmail.com if you fancy joining me- especially once some of the more obvious sections of the trip are scheduled.

As I write this I sit beneath the whirring fan in the staff apartment of the Books Hostel in Rio de Janeiro, guest of the irrepressible Andy Hortor, with the sounds of this hot and happy city reaching me from the street below.  I’m here until the end of April, then of no fixed abode throughout May (a situation I should probably address before boarding the plane home on 28/04) so I hope that I can fly to Grenada on 1st June.  Notwithstanding a pause to attend my brother’s wedding in Jersey in late July, that should allow me four months even if the Next Step after that is to return to academia at the end of September.

Or then again, I could revert to Plan A, move to a garret room in New Orleans, marinade myself in rum, and spend the summer toying with becoming a writer.  We shall see!!