Personal Post: Day 9: Naples-Pompeii

Early in the morning, on our last full day in Italy, we took a bus tour down the Sun Route motorway through Lazio and Campania. We were going from Rome south to Naples and Pompeii. The sun was rising over the countryside, with the early morning fog hovering over the lush green fields, one after another.

We stopped briefly in Monte Cassino, which is apparently where all the tour buses stop for breakfast and bathroom breaks. To our west, we admired the Apennine mountain range. Even though we were pretty far south in the Italian boot, there was snow on the mountains! Our tour guide pointed us to the Abbey of Monte Cassino that was sitting on the side of the slope.

About three hours after leaving Rome, we arrived at Naples. Our bus stopped at the port area where cruise ships were lining up. After getting off the bus, we went on a half-hour walk limited to the main sites of Naples. We started at Castel Nuovo, then passed Galleria Umberto and Teatro di San Carlo, and ended up in the Piazza del Plebiscito. I highly doubt that this short walk was representative of Naples and what it may have to offer.

I was fairly disappointed that I didn't get a chance to taste the famous Neapolitan pizza. As the birth place of pizza, I have heard that you can't leave Naples without trying their pizza. Unfortunately, we did just that. Apparently, we tour didn't include lunch in Naples. Instead, the group stopped at a restaurant in Pompeii, not far from the ancient ruins. The food and the service wasn't that great at this particular restaurant. There were so few waiters that we think they forgot our table altogether.

Across from the entrance to the ancient ruins of Pompeii, there is a local coral and cameo factory. All the jewelry and mantelpieces and chess sets there were handmade. There was a girl who was actually making a piece of jewelry right when you walk in. This was interesting to some extent, but it felt so much like a tourist trap! We didn't purchase anything here. Instead, we got gelato from the restaurant next door.

Once we entered Pompeii, we separated from the group. We're not too much into listening to a tour guide tell us all about the history but only getting to see a small portion of this ancient city. We wandered away on our own and didn't see anyone else from our tour for the next couple of hours. The caldera of Mount Vesuvius was pretty far off in the distance, only appearing as a silhouette against the blue sky, and it's hard to imagine that it spewed so much ashes to destroy this town all those years ago. There were some construction going on in Pompeii, which is kind of strange. I suppose you still have to maintain ancient ruins, but it kind of defeats the purpose of this site being an ancient ruin and all.

In my mind, I thought of all the people living here in 79AD. I'm no history buff, so I really don't know what happened back in those days. My imagination brought me to all these people. Was this a society that really liked cooking? There were so many rooms that we passed that were presumed to be shops and kitchens. Were they into sports? There's a huge stadium on the edge of town. How did they travel from one end of town to the other? There were huge gaping holes between cobblestones, and the step from the sidewalk to the street was high. It's hard after living in today's world to imaging what life was like over two thousand years ago.

Later in the afternoon, we left Pompeii and Naples and returned to Rome. By the time we arrived in Rome, it was dark out. We returned to our hotel to pack. We were leaving Italy the next day.