We went backpacking with suitcases in Italy and it was a mess

CNN — Like many people, I developed an obsession with Italy relatively early in life. I got my first taste of the beautiful country during a school trip to Florence, during which my friends and I had a blast recreating scenes from the E.M. Forster’s novel “Room With A View,” eating gelato, walking along the River Arno and hanging out by the Duomo. It took us so long to find “Juliet’s tomb,” a sarcophagus beneath the former Monastery of San Francesco al Corso that’s said to have links with Shakespeare’s tragic love story, I actually remember more about the random places we ended up than the tomb. Tamara Hardingham-Gill Nevertheless, by the time we got to Rome, we’d convinced ourselves we were seasoned adventurers – albeit seasoned travelers with enough shoes to last several months. After a failed attempt at seeing Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”– the queue for the Uffizi Gallery was insane – we sheepishly returned to the station to await our train.