One Day in Pompeii

So we stayed overnight in Rome in a hostel, and it was great, like I said. But we had made arrangements for the next day to wake up at three in the morning, check out, and then take a five AM train to Naples, then connect to Pompeii. We all knew that wasn't going to happen, especially when we found out the early train left from another train station--not the one four blocks from our hostel. So we spent about two hours on Monday trying to get a different train. After trudging from bus station to tourist info to Eurostar info, we finally found that our tickets worked with an eight AM train. So we woke at seven, checked out, grabbed some snacks and went to the station. The train ride to Naples was unspectacular. (Though we went through a lot of tunnels, and at one point the lights in the train went out while we were in one, and we couldn't see our hands in front of our faces.) When we reached the suburbs, we got to see the awful trash situation that's going on there. But we didn't see much of the city proper--just the train station, really. We were directed from place to place, trying to look for the train to Pompeii (there was fabled to be one that left ever half hour). We tramped to one end of the train station with all our bags, only to discover that our tickets didn't work with that train. So we went back to tourist info, which misdirected us in the first place. He had nothing else to offer, so Eurostar info came to our rescue once more, and we found our train. 45 minutes later, we were in Pompeii. And a short walk later, we were at the ruins. We were able to leave our luggage at the ticket office, so it was really nice to just wander around at our own pace.

The first few streets are pretty unspectacular looking, especially when the sky is grey. But the weather cleared up throughout our day. We just hung out for the most part and wandered through the ruins. I'm sure we didn't see anything because we only had four hours there until they closed, but we saw enough.

They've done a nice job of cleaning everything up so that the city looks the closest to livable as possible. A lot of the frescoes are covered with plastic so they last, and you're allowed to walk through a lot of the houses. It was really great!


I don't want to sound like a photo nerd, but the quality of light in these houses was really awesome. It was so soft and made everything look really blue and beautiful.


This was what I took to be a palace, or at least the home of a much wealthier person, because it was much bigger and had more elaborate paintings as well as a courtyard.


This is a shot through a big loggia at the ampitheater. We didn't go in, but we looked at it and posed for goofy photos in front of it.


There were all these really friendly dogs just wandering around the city. I think that there is a restaurant that feeds them scraps, so they're not hungry and they don't beg--they'll let you pet them. Neil made friends with a few of them. (And this one's just sleeping.)


I think that these counters indicate either kitchens or restaurants--I'm not sure. They were always in the front of buildings, so that makes me think that they're places where people could walk in and buy food or something. They didn't have any signs up, so it's still a mystery to me.


Here's one of the temples in the forum. The bricks are used to reconstruct the columns where the original pieces of marble are missing. They make for a very strange look...


I thought this room was particularly lovely.


And here you can see Mt. Visuvius just faintly through the haze.


And that was about it for Pompeii! (There are a few more pictures, but since I posted so many of Rome, I don't want to take up too much bandwidth.) We got the train back to Naples, no problem, and then went back to Rome and transferred to Florence. It was a very long day, but really fun. Needless to say, we were exhausted the next day in class, but I think it was worth it.

Anyway, here's a view of the sea from the train on our way back to Naples. I finally got to see it!