Fortunately Rome to Naples is a short trip. We had planned to get a hostel, leave our bags, and then head right out to Pompeii, but that didn't end up working out. After walking around for a while we didn't find any hostels close to the train station so we decided to lock our bags up at the station for the day while we went out and then take an overnight train to Venice instead of going during the day tomorrow.
The train to Pompeii is actually more of a metro than a distance train and only took about 20-30 minutes.
I must admit, I found myself surprised by a lot today. First of all, in my mind, Pompeii is an ancient city destroyed by a volcano. True, except the ancient city is connected to a modern Pompeii. Next, I always imagined it to be a small village type of place.
Boy, was I wrong.
Even in its ruined state and thousands of years later it is easy to see how extravagant it was. Not to mention huge. In the 3.5 hours we had in the site we probably only covered about half. If that.
At first when we were looking around it was all plain stone walls, simple buildings and here and there something that would stand out. A large stadium, detailed tombs and the occasional pot or urn, but as you get deeper into the city it changes. Suddenly you appear to be looking into lush villas. In some areas the walls allowed us to see what it was really like. Brightly colored. Decorated with paintings. Some buildings even have "toilets" with multi-colored marble tops. We saw courtyards with columns, a bathhouse, vineyards and public areas. Best of all, we got to see the body casts of the victims. So so incredible and so lifelike still. On some of them we could even see the facial expressions.
Nothing about this place feels similar to anywhere we could go in modern times, and that is a very cool feeling.
Eventually we had to leave because of closing time. Closing time is a sad time. We would have happily stayed in there for many more hours. Even with sore feet and in the pouring rain. Also unfortunate about leaving was that we had a checked bag at the entrance we came in, but we finished at a different entrance. We weren't able to walk back through the site so we had a 15 minute speed walk and a short sprint along the outside to get it. We barely made it. And of course we were soaked when we got there.
Back on the train for Naples. Listening for the announcement of when to get off.
"(Italian, Italian, Italian,) Napoli Centrale, (Italian, Italian)"
Ok, this must be where we get off.
Look around the platform.
Nope, this is most certainly NOT Napoli Centrale station.
A half hour of laughing like lunatics and then another train showed up to take us the rest of the way. We almost didn't get off at the right stop a second time... That would just be pathetic. And pretty funny. It's all part of the adventure.
Finally back at the right station we collected our other bags, had some dinner and went to wait for our train to Venice. We were planning to take a train to Venice from 8:00pm-5:30am, but like the rest of our day it didn't go quite how we planned. Instead we have a 9:30pm-6:55am train to Milan where we move to another train for 7:35-9:58 to Venice. It actually worked better this was though because we get beds!
How foreign! Sleeping in trains!!!
One last thing to not work out, our 9:30 departure turned into an 11 o'clock departure.
And we are on the road again!!
I'll meet you in Venice!
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