Back in Time

In this post we go back to Wednesday August 4th. Yes there is a lot to catch up on but stay tuned because we have been writing every day even though we have not had the internet much! We left the Wednesday out of our Rome post because although we were still staying in Rome that day, it was a hugely different experience.

We got up very early to get a train to Naples, a couple of hours away from Rome. It was a comfortable trip and as we were on the train at about 7 we were able to doze through most of the journey. From Naples or Napoli as it is called in Italy, we caught the circumvesuvius train - a hot, rattly old train that slowly makes its way around Mt Vesuvius. For those who don't know, Vesuvius is a volcano that is still active. It erupted nearly 2000 years ago, covering a small city called Pompeii with hot ash. This both destroyed and preserved the city. These ruins were our destination. The train took another half hour or so, giving us views of Napoli's beautiful coast. I wished I had organised for us to have more time in the area - the neighbouring city ruins of Herculaneum are supposed to be excellent as well, the island of Capri (a favourite of many celebrities) is not far off the coast, and Sorrento is apparently a lovely place to stay. Nevertheless time, money, and wanting a really good taste of Rome meant that we had to limit our visit to this southern part of Italy to one day. We got off the train at Pompeii Scavi and stepped out into even more intense heat. It was a short walk to the entrance where we paid a reasonably small admission fee and picked up audio guides as well. With full water bottles and lots of sunscreen we started our walk. It was incredible to be up close to these ancient ruins, which I had studied in school.


We saw market forums, the ruins of halls of justice and commerce, many many residential dwellings, theatres and temples.


I loved the House of The Fawn, a mansion by the standards of the time, so called because of the bronze fawn in the courtyard. The temple of Apollo was also excellent.


Much is being done to preserve Pompeii but it was so extensively covered that only about a third of it has been excavated! We still couldn't see all of it in one day. To research life in ancient times there are also experimental vegetable gardens, vineyards and some winemaking going on there. The theatres are also used occasionally for contemporary concerts, though of course they no longer have roofs. We were able to access a lot of the ruins and walk around in the houses, among the paintings and old fountains and eateries.

We tried to touch nothing, though some people climbed all over things to have photos on them, statues and everything. It was quite upsetting to see the lack of respect some people had, even littering and taking pieces of rock and broken pottery as souveniers. It is such a large place I suppose it is hard to enforce the kind of behaviour you would expect in a museum. Some artifacts are behind glass though, such as eating impliments, jars, jewellery and even human remains. The Garden Of The Fugitives has several bodies, sadly they are mostly children who were obviously trying to hide from the downpour of ash on the outskirts of the city. They are very fascinating though and I had not really understood how they were preserved. I can't remember dates or the names of the archaologists involved unfortunately (though I'm sure you could google it!) but basically there were excavations taking place and it became evident that there were bones buried beneath the rock and ash. Suddenly inspired, an archaeologist ordered plaster of paris to be poured into the spaces among the bones. When it set and was removed, the plaster was in the shape of the huddled bodies, with the bones captured inside. It was a sad sight but very fascinating.


There were also a dog and a mule. When we had walked through as much of Pompeii as we could in the time we had, we headed back to Napoli station to get our train to Rome in the evening. It was delayed by an hour! We decided to use the time wisely and hurried to find a pizzeria. Naples is the birthplace of pizza and it did not disappoint. We found a very ordinary looking inexpensive little place, where the owner said us, "You want real pizza, Napoli pizza? No mind menu, you want two bufalina". We had glanced at the various combinations but we didn't argue. Bufalia was the simplest, cheapest on the menu - tomato, a few torn leaves of basil and slices of rich buffalo mozzarella. And this was the pizza we had hoped to find in Italy. It was roughly made by hand, had wonderful fresh ingredients and perfect flavour. We both agree that there is probably not another pizza that will ever live up to it for us!


The train ride back to Rome was obviously perfectly timed for us after all. We watched the sun go down and passed by fields and fields of corn, pumpkins and olives. The light was golden, the hills were green and I actually got a bit teary thinking how magical it all was and what a spectacular time in our lives this is. Our sleep that night was well deserved, and we were pleased with ourselves for doing the massive day trip independently. If you ever want to go, do it yourself. We spent 80 euro for two of us to catch the train there and back, packed our own lunch and drink bottles, paid 9 euro for return trips on the circumvesuvius, 22 for our entry to pompeii, 12 for both our audio guides, and 11 for two pizzas with a drink each. The whole day came to 134 euros for the two of us - the organised coach trips start at about 120 euro per person with less time in the city due to the long bus ride and no dinner. It was an expensive day regardless but we had a wonderful time in Pompeii.