Aphrodite21's VirtualTourist Home Page

Hi, my name is Jessica. I'm a grad student in archaeology. I originally joined VT in 2001, the same year I started university, but I still found the time to create and update my pages for about 2 years. In about third year, as I began to consider the possibility of doing the academic thing full time, my workload at school also increased. I kind of abandoned VT for a while, but created the odd unfinished page here and there. Ironically, precisely during the years that I abandoned VT, I also did the most traveling. So what brought me back? Well in grad school the workload certainly did not get easier and it likely isn't going to in the immediate future as I'm applying to Ph.D. programs for next year. But I do have some awesome travel stories, experiences, and photos so I might as well share them here. Plus, when studying Greek and Roman monuments gets to be a little too overwhelming I can always use this as a procrastination tool.

A word of warning: I'm notoriously unreliable when it comes to answering messages and e-mails. It's nothing personal but sometimes I just get too caught up in my own work that everything gets moved to the backburner. There are so many pages on here that are just amazing and in which clearly a lot of work and effort has gone - I can only hope that my own particular insight into and perspective on places to which so many have traveled can find a place and be helpful to people.

The name? Aphrodite has always been my favourite classical deity - so much so that every once in a while when I need to throw together a Halloween costume quickly I choose to go as her.

Since I study classical archaeology my travels in the last few years have consisted of academic trips. On a travel scholarship I visited Italy in 2004 and for 2 weeks went to several major sites and museums. In 2005 I was accepted to a field school that excavates in Pompeii - for 6 weeks I 'lived' in modern Pompeii and on weekends made trips to surrounding areas. This past summer I participated on a 6 week intensive session in Greece that took me to the majority of archaeological sites and museums there.

I hope that these unique opportunities have given me an insight into places that others may not have. In certain aspects I am absolutely of no help. For example, I couldn't tell you where to stay in either Pompeii or Athens as in Pompeii I lived in an apartment and in Athens I stayed at a school. In terms of transportation, in Greece we had a bus and that took us everywhere so again I am of no help when it comes to getting to a site. Regardless, I'm sure that in other respects my tips may be quite helpful.