A Trip to Naples and Pompeii

One of my goals during my five weeks in Italy was to visit Naples and Pompeii. After putting it off for a week, I finally headed south of Rome for the day. Brukab decided he wanted to go to the market instead, so Manmeet and I left without him. Shopping instead of Pompeii? C'mon now. =P

After a two hour train ride from Rome to Naples, we took a 45 minute commuter train to Pompeii. By the time we got all the way to Pompeii, it was almost 12 PM already. The whole trip down there took about four hours total because we left for the Rome Central Station around 7:40 AM. The long journey was well worth it though.

Pompeii, an ancient Roman city that lay in the shadow of the massively active volcano, Mt. Vesuvius, was almost completely covered in 8 feet of ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. (according to Rick Steves). As a result, much of the city was frozen in time and has since been slowly excavated. There is still about 25% of the ancient city that has yet to be excavated, but the areas that you can wander through are incredibly impressive. Take a look:

You can see the two peaks of Mt. Vesuvius today after the ancient volcano blew up in 79 A.D. It used to be massive!

The molded ash of volcano victims buried underground. Slightly disturbing.

One thing I definitely noticed about Pompeii is the number of stray dogs running around the ruins. It's pretty ridiculous.

A nice French lady took a picture us in the House of Fauns. After which, we took a nice picture of her and her mom.

Pompeii has massive stones in the street and all very rough to walk on.

We entered the theater in Pompeii that overlooked the large area where people used to gather for shows. I tried my best to take a panorama shot.

Behind the theater was the old gladiators training grounds. Pretty neat place.

We had walked all around Pompeii and were getting tired, so back to Naples it was. We got back around 3:30 PM so we only had about 3 hours to explore the city before heading back to Rome. I had Rick Steves' guide book with us so we took his 2 hour self-guided walking tour.

We started out in Piazza Dante, where Dante is standing over the fairly empty square. Everything seemed to be closed around that time because it was middle of the afternoon.

We walked all the way down to the royal castle and the harbor. Amazing part of town!

From the port of Naples, you can see the view of Mt. Vesuvius across the water. The breeze felt so great!

We had to sort of move quickly to get back to the train station because it was a long walk to get over there. By the time we got back, we had roughly 20 minutes to find some dinner. I'd heard that the pizza in Naples is exquisite, so we ventured into the Pizzeria for a try. I have to admit, the price was great, but the pizza wasn't anything special. Still, it was tasty.

Our train trip back was one of the most interesting experiences I've had so far. We talked with Daniel, a sports writer/analyst from Mexico City who was in Europe for a 32-day tourist trip through several European countries. He had been in our compartment on the train from Rome to Naples, and coincidentally, we sat in the same compartment again when we returned to Rome.

He had just finished his degree in Communications and had completed it while working two jobs at the same time. He told us how his passion was to be a well-paid sports writer, but that, as much as he loves Mexico, it's a difficult job market in Mexico. Sports writers who want to make it into the business have to write for free for two years, just to gauge the interest level of readers. If they write well and have a strong following, there may be an opportunity to get paid for writing. If they don't write well, they better start looking for others jobs.

Daniel said his dream job is to work with ESPN and that he's an avid fan of US sports. We talked about Major League Baseball (he's followed his favorite team, the Colorado Rockies, for ten years--last year's World Series sweep to the Red Sox was heartbreaking for him), the NFL (he's a major fan of the San Francisco 49ers), and soccer. He's not a big fan of basketball and despises hockey, but he has to at least stay up to date on them in order to be a strong sports writer.

It was fascinating to see how passionate he was about sports. We connected very quickly on the topic as I'm a baseball nut too. Our conversation was most interesting when we started talking about politics (he wishes he could vote, but since he lives in Mexico City, he is keeping his fingers crossed for Obama and has been calling his friends and contacts in America to make sure they vote for him). It was interesting to note that he said of all the Americans he's talked to during his month of travel, every one of them has been against John McCain. My theory--traveling abroad opens your eyes to the kind of American leadership needs in the 21st century and most people see that in Barack Obama.

As Manmeet and Daniel talked in Spanish (good practice for Manmeet), I was able to follow along for the most part. My French has been pretty rusty, but it's been helpful in trying to understand Spanish and Italian too. Soon, three more folks filled our compartment, and as we kept talking, they started paying attention and chimed in in English. It was awesome to see the power of languages and communication. Michele, a lawyer from Naples practicing international corporte law in Rome, served as our unofficial translator between Manmeet, me, Daniel, and an Italian couple (the wife was a teacher but we didn't know how to ask anything in Italian...) in our compartment.

Neither of the Italian couple spoke English (the husband only spoke tiny bits), so they had been asking Michele, in Italian of course, to translate our English conversation while we were talking, oblivious to the conversation about us. For the next hour of our trip, it was cool to watch as Daniel spoke in Spanish and English, while the Italian couple listened and understood some of Daniel's Spanish, while Manmeet laughed at some of Daniel's Spanish phrases, and Michele translated for us all.

By the end of our journey, we exchanged email addresses with each other. Why? So we could keep in touch on Facebook. Turns out Michele is part of the Italian network, and Daniel is part of the Mexican network. How small the world can be with the internet!

Tomorrow, our last week in Rome will start, and it will be a fun one. We'll start off at a school where parents and teachers will be sitting in on the school as a protest. Now that's something you don't see everyday in the US. I had been hoping to add the Etruscan Museum to my checked-off list of things to see, but like a whole bunch of other museums in Rome, it's closed on Monday. Blah...not sure if I'll have time later this week to go...we'll see. =]