Pompei - Where is the pornography?

  Pompei, Italy
Thursday, June 8, 2006

Yesterday, aside from not being sick, was one of the worst days I've had in Italy so far. Being as it was a "travel day," the weather was, of course, perfect. After we got up on time, got to the train station on time, and caught our train, it took over an hour to go ten miles. I wasn't counting on that. So we were, of course, running late by the time we got to Naples to catch the ferry to Palermo, Sicily. I fidget the entire time I'm standing in the "running late for tickets" line, get to the front, manage to get reservations, notice our train is running late, and think "We're going to make it." We stare at the sign with the track numbers until something flashes on the screen - PG2. Usually it's just a number, but we have no time to think about this, and run to track 2. Literally. We were exhausted by the time we got to track 2, where we found out from a conductor they didn't mean *that* track 2, they meant the one *underground.* Of course. How silly of us.

But we were too tired to run any more, so we walked as fast as we could back to the station to find the stairs underground, see a sign for our train, and run down the last flight of stairs to the track. A train pulls up. It is a subway. There is no way it's going to Sicily. We look at each other, at the train, and are still staring as it leaves, trying to get someone around us to explain what's going on. Eventually we shrug, go back upstairs, and the sole helpful employee at the Naples train station explains that it left. Evidently it left just as we were going down the stairs, as the sign was still up when we got there, but it was gone by the time we got to the bottom.

So we're stuck in Naples. We sit in McDonald's (we seriously don't like McDonald's that much - it's just sometimes the only thing there) and regroup and decide to do Pompei today, take the overnight ferry, and call the hotel in Palermo to move our reservations. After finding an internet place -in a scary underground alley- by the train station to get the number to call the hotel, we find out there's no rooms for the next day. We drop our stuff off at the baggage check, where the guy refused to take my 20€ for a charge of 7.20€, and go back underground to catch the slowest train ever to Pompei.



We get to Pompei, and the black storm clouds start gathering overhead. They actually look kind of cool over Mt. Vesuvius. Very forbidding. We resolutely ignore them, and start walking. And walking. Pompei is a whole lot bigger than you think it is. We spent nearly three hours walking around Pompei, the last part of it separately, and did not find the famed pornographic paintings. We didn't see the people frozen as ash statues, either. But since, between us, we'd covered all the main areas, we're assuming all of this was in one of the many, many roped off areas. After it started sprinkling, though, I'd turned around and started back toward the entrance, and met Sarah forty-five minutes later coming the same way. We stopped in the gift shop on the way out, where they had absolutely no postcards of the architecture of the ruins, just lots of postcards of the people and mosaics we never got to see.



I liked Pompei itself. It felt kind of like a cross between the Native American ruins and the Mayan ruins, with some uniquely Roman touches, like the marble work. And since it was so big, it wasn't that hard to avoid other people. (It was huge. Bigger than any Mayan ruin we saw, I think.) There were several times when I couldn't even hear any other voices on the street I was walking down. I would have liked to see Ercolano, too, to have a point of comparison, but we really didn't have the time or desire.



We were ravenous by the time we got back to Naples, so we stopped for supper in a Chinese restaurant. I went by the scary underground internet place to find a new hotel, and got back to the station perfectly on time to get our bags and have forty minutes to wait before the train starts boarding. That station, though, is cold. It's not really indoors, since one entire wall is open to the tracks, and the front wall is open in huge places for the construction they're doing. The waiting room is closed and there are no chairs anywhere, just big cold stone benches right by the tracks. So we pace, thinking, "The train will be here soon and we can sit down and get comfy."

About that time, the board ticks over to show that the train is running an hour and fifteen minutes late. So we have over two hours to sit around a huge cold building with no chairs. We move ourselves to the ticketing room to get a windbreak, and stare into space for quite some time. We listen to a guy yell on the phone for a good forty-five minutes before the police escort him out. I try to clean out my bag and throw away the garbage, and I can't find a single garbage can in the entire ticketing lobby. We notice every single train that runs the south route is running very late, so it's not just us. Several other people, some of them with babies and small children, are pacing around, too.

FINALLY the train arrives, we are hustled on as quickly as possible, and we get our first experience in a sleeper train. It could have been worse, I suppose. Both of our bunkmates could have had bad manners and personal hygiene, rather than just one of them. But I think that one lady more than made up for it. She took it on herself to wake us up this morning (after her first beer at around 7am) before we'd even been there eight solid hours. Glaring at her just made her act out more. I resolutely pretended she wasn't there, applying, no exaggeration, at least nine coats of lip gloss, full makeup, and scented oil. Loudly. Since, if I were her, the first thing I'd do upon reaching my destination would be to take a shower, I don't have any idea what all that primping was for. I will hope for better next time.

Currently we're in Palermo, where they have internet, a laundry, and the hotel is within walking distance of the station. They are right by the sea and have several pretty buildings we've walked past in the short time we've been here. I have high hopes for this place.

Verdict: We still have no strong feelings about Naples, but we hate their train station. Having trains run on the underground metro tracks that don't appear on the map? That's just not fair. We didn't have a chance.