A day in Napoli and Pompeii
Trip Start
Aug 09, 2008
1
17
34
Trip End
Sep 16, 2008
Rome,
Italy
Monday, August 25, 2008
The bus arrives and I'm on it. It stops at a couple of more hotels, to pick up some more tourists, then onto the Tour Office to pick up the last ones. There are about 40 of us in all. 4 different languages including a Fin. Even though the tour guide is multilingual, she asks everyone if they can all understand English
Monte Casino
. Apparently, too many languages at once is hard on her voice and sometimes she'll mix them up. (She said that not me.) Well down to 3 anyway. The Fin knows English quite well.It's a 3-hour bus ride to Napoli. We have a stop at a hotel near Monte Casino for something to eat and drink (and smoke). Couldn't see the monastery on the hill very well, but I could see it. I can say I've been there and sort of seen it. Next was a stop at a cameo-making factory. Now I'm not much into cameos, but the work that was done at this factory was quite amazing, and very expensive. The most expensive cameo was 7600 euros and a bit rich for my pocket. The cheapest was around 40 euros. We weren't allowed to take photos of the works. Shame really, they were quite nice.
Next it was Napoli, where we stopped to drop of those who were going to the Island of Capri. Meanwhile the rest of us on the bus did a brief tour of Napoli, before heading off to Pompeii, another 45mins to an hour away.
Napoli was interesting (and big), very dilapidated in some places. We did stop along what I thought was a beachfront. It was of sorts, but instead of sand it had huge white boulders like the type you get for breakwaters
Fountain in Napoli
. There were some locals sunbathing, and swimming from the rocks.When we got to Pompeii, we had lunch first. Spaghetti, Turkey slices, Chips, and Ice Cream. Not the type we have at home, but the Gelatin type. Still it was very nice. And I had to taste the local beer called Birra. That was a nice Lager.
Finally we all finished lunch and was bused to the entrance of Pompeii itself. The tour guide then guided us through part of the ruins for about an hour and a half, then left us to explore. Now I only mentioned the tour around briefly, because he took us around lots of sites. The Pompeii ruins are huge. After nearly 250 years of excavating, they haven't even uncovered two thirds of it. There are some magnificent fresco's on the walls of some of the buildings, the roads are cobble stoned with rather large boulders. There are worn out grooves in the roads where the chariots had traversed. The houses used sliding wooden doors. You can still see the grooves in the doorways, stepping stones on the street for people to walk across the road, Water fountains on nearly every street.
The highlight for me was to see in the main amphitheatre
Napoli
. It's a massive structure that was, like most of Pompeii, buried under 6 metres of ash and cinders. It was like a miniature Coliseum, a fully encircled arena. There were also 2 other small amphitheatres, but only half circled. Here is an indication of how big Pompeii is. It took me an hour to walk from one end to the other, and another half an hour to find my way out again. There wasn't enough time to see it all. It's a shame; there were so many other places of interest to see too.
Alas 5pm arrived and it was time to leave. We boarded the bus, and returned to Napoli to pick up those that went to Capri. They said it was a panoramic trip. Not much history to be observed, but very beautiful. They all said (from what I could gather) that they had a great time too. On back to Roma.
We arrived back in Roma about 9:30pm. Thankfully, we got dropped off at our respective hotels. Absolutely shagged once again, but worth it.
