This morning we set off at a not too disgustingly early time; Raina would refer to this as a sleep in however, I with the normal and sane standards of a university student would not agree.
We jumped on yet another HoHo bus (Hop on Hop off) to tour around Rome. Rome was amazing, unsurprisingly. However the tour was not. The commentary was barely audible, out of sync and quite sparse. Pretty bizarre that Rome, one of the places with the richest and greatest amount of history , was the one with the poor commentary with lots of silence. The bus also ran on a timetable, unlike all others we have been on, so if we were ahead of the schedule we had to sit at the stop for up to 20min.
Luckily though – this is Rome. And Rome has enough to offer to get away with sub standard ways of seeing it.
The first look at Colosseum was awe-inspiring. We rounded the corner and there it was, huge and looming. We got off the bus and walked around the outside and looked at the outer rim and Constantine’s Arch. We also got photos with the dorky guys dressed up as Gladiators. They are actually pretty fun, big personalities and the costumes are really good.
We left there (going back to do the full tour tomorrow) and headed down to Pompeii. We caught two trains here. We in fact, had our third experience of missing the train, of the many we have caught. The first miss was in Milan as our connecting train was late. The next was from Venice - it spontaneously changed the time and left early making us miss it by 2 seconds. We were running down the platform, got three paces from the door and the guy would not let us on. And the third was from Rome to Naples because the board listed the destination under a different name that was not on our ticked and the board did not display a number. As you may have guessed, catching trains in Europe is stressful, once you are on it is a great way to travel.
We used this time to go across the street to get a coffee and a prosciutto roll. The coffee here is so amazing, the best coffee I have ever ever had.
This train took us down the Amalfi Coast which is (supposedly) some of Europe’s best scenery. However 5 ks inland it is a slum. A dirty, shabby area of hundreds of graffiti riddled government apartment blocks and run down houses. It is not at all what I expected.
Pompeii was amazing, so interesting and really picturesque. A much larger city then I was expecting. One of the best parts was the brilliantly well preserved Brothel. On the walls were paintings and mosaics which appeared to be a sort of menu. Choose your type of girl, position, etc. Lol.
If you know me, you may know I have a mortal fear of volcanoes. Ever since I learnt about them when I was 7, I have been terrified. Pompeii upsets me a little having to go so close to a volcano and have to look at the damage it did but I was supported and assured the whole way by Raina that it is fine because Vesuvius is a long extinct volcano. To which I countered “yeah, the ancient Pomiians though that too.”
Anyway, as we made our way through the city listening to our downloaded audio tours I nearly died when I heard the sentence. “Vesuvius is today an active volcano.”
Raina swears she truly thought it was extinct. I am still not happy. In the past we have theorized that I had a past life cut short by the eruption that sealed Pompeii.
A long train trip back and we had late dinner at a charming and extreme delicious family pasta place.
Then slept.
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