As we were coming from Venice, we had a rather large swathe of Italy to cross. Italy boasts a number of fast train networks - and is about the only European country where you can choose which high speed train company to travel with over the same route. There's the government-owned FrecciaRossa services, and those of Italo, a private company which was set up solely to provide highspeed train services. We were going from Venice to Naples, the two extremities of the high speed network and for this journey, we were taking Italo as it had been cheaper -and we'd scored a deal to ride in 1st class.
Most of what I remember of the journey is it was hot outsite, I was still suffering a bit from last night's wine excesses and not once, but twice Sasha and I had to switch seats so she was facing forwards - once at Florence, and again at Rome. We'd strategically booked the only two single seats around a table, so we were able to do such a thing without bothering anyone. In total the trip was about 5-5.5 hours long.
We then had to change from the main train lines down to the station which served the Circumvesuviana lines, a narrow-gauge railway that went from Naples to Sorrento and a few other places. This station was quite grotty, not well signposted and plinging with people. There were 4 platforms and no real sign to say which trains were leaving from what - 2 of the platforms were for trains going the other way. I knew we needed the train going to Sorrento, and we established eventually that it would leave from Platform 3. Lots of people were on Platform 3, and when a train showed up at that platform many people rushed on it - we had overheard them asking "Which train to Pompeii" or "Which train to Sorrento" and they'd been told Platform 3. The thing was, not every train at Platform 3 was going to Sorrento or Pompeii - there was a branch line or two which some of these trains were taking instead. No idea how some of those people might have got on in the end, but we piled onto a Sorrento-bound train and found it very full. Not the best thing when you have huge, bulky luggage items with you!
At the station we needed (the one prior to Pompeii Porta Marina) we got off, and walked to our accommodation. It had been a long journey and it was dark now, but we were there!
Originally we'd looked at staying in Naples near the Railway Station for 1 night, assuming that Pompeii would be pricey and too far to travel from Venice in the time we had. However Sasha had not heard good things about Naples, and was getting increasingly concerned about the reviews of the places in Naples - coupled with that, Naples was a bit pricey too. I discovered that the journey time from Naples to Pompeii was less than an hour so I suggested we look instead at staying in Pompeii and seeing how that stacked up. It turns out Pompeii was only marginally more than the places we had seen in Naples, but were a lot nicer and had good reviews. So we settled on a place as close to the ruins as we could afford.
We had a little bit of trouble finding the place, but it had been a long day and once in I marched straight for the entrance across the courtyard - and Sasha and I promptly stepped in dog poo. Oh great, its all smeared over the underside of my shoe! I tried my best to clear it off before we went inside, and checked in. Earlier in the day we'd recieved a phone call from our accommodation asking were we still coming, and what time would be arrive. All seemed to be ok. Once checked in and we'd paid, when you'd normally expect to get your keys we got told to sit an wait and someone would be along shortly to take us to our hotel. Huh, what? They explained they were overbooked, but we would be staying at another place, it was all organised and they would be along shortly in a car to pick us up. Sasha got a bit mad, as they could have told us this ahead of time and we also had booked this one specifically for its proximity to the ruins - and now we weren't even staying there!
The people arrived, spoke functional but broken English, we hopped in the car and were driven 5-10 minutes down the road to a set of apartments and were shown our new room. There was no question that our new place was far fancier than we would have had at the old place - we'd definitely been traded up! The only one aspect which was not quite up to the level we'd paid for was the breakfast. Our original place had a buffet breakfast, but our new apartments didn't typically come with provided breakfast. However they would get breakfast delivered to us each morning - a croissant, our choice of juice and a coffee, fairly typical Italian fare. We were able to eat the breakfast on the balcony that we had, when it was a pleasant temperature and not so over-hot yet! And above all - this new place was actually closer to the ruins than the last, and closer to the township itself. Its said that stepping in dog poop is good luck - maybe this time, it was true!
Everyone knows of Pompeii, the city which was ruined by the Eruption of Vesuvius. Everyone knows about the plaster casts of the victims. But as much as I knew about Pompeii, there were surprises to be had when visiting the ancient city.
We arrived not long after the ruins had opened for the day and already it was pretty thronging. We entered not via the "main" gate, but by the Porta Marina gate which was closest to the Circumvesuviana railway line station that went to Sorrento. Not long after entering we found a sort of museum that showed some of the treasures found in Vesuvius, including a coin which suggests the eruption happened later than the generally accepted 79AD. In here too were some of those infamous casts. Afterwards we started touring the ruins, some areas you could go in and some you couldn't.
We'd done ruins already in this trip, but nothing quite prepared me for Pompeii. So Pompeii was a city near Vesuvius, Vesuvius erupted, and buried Pompeii. Not with lava, but something called a Pyroclastic flow - a kind of super-hot mix of ash and gases. The heat killed everyone instantly when it hit them, they got covered in ash, and the city was buried. Intact. It burned away any timber rooves of houses and buildings, but all the stone walls, the stone streets, the pottery, it all survived with little or no damage. Even paint on the walls survived. The city has only suffered from damage to the elements since being uncovered - but the whole city is still there, remarkably intact. Its huge and it took Sasha and I over 4 hours to get around all of it!
Then there's the plaster casts of the people. I knew the story - when digging up the ruins, they discovered voids in the compacted ash and realised it was people, and came up with the idea of pouring plaster into the voids to preserve what was the last remains of these people for as soon as the ash was gone, so were they. What I didn't know - that it took them a few attempts to get good detail out of the plaster, which involved playing around with the mixture, and that the reason they knew the voids were people were the skeleton bones found inside each void. Therefore, each plaster cast also contains the skeletons of the Pompeii victims - and sometimes you can see the bones in the plaster. Its a bit gruesome when you realise what actually happened to these people - the pyroclastic flow came along, it essentially deep-fried them on the spot, cocooned them in ash, and then over time all that was left of the people was the void which contained their bones. Almost all of the casts show people reacting in some way to the flow - hands up in front of their faces, shielding others, or trying to get away from it. Some casts even show the outlines or patterns of what they were wearing. Its remarkable - and unique, for its just one of those "perfect storm" of conditions and elements that made such a thing possible.
Another fairly unique aspect of Pompeii didn't occur to me until we were there - unlike other ruins we had seen, the entire ruins all dated from the same time and era. There were no areas that had been used for hundreds of years after by people, or altered by post-Roman tribes. Everything is as it was at that point in time when the Volcano erupted. Its remarkable - but Pompeii still sits in the shadow of Vesuvius as it always had. Maybe one day, Vesuvius will have another crack at burying Pompeii - and maybe this time destroying it for good. Who knows if that might ever happen, but sometimes you can't tame Mother Nature's fury and if it erupts and it sends its rocks and lava to Pompeii, nothing's going to stop that!
Did you know Pompeii was not the only city covered and ruined by that same eruption of Vesuvius? Chances are, you didn't - I didn't until I watched a History Channel doco-drama about the Vesuvius eruption. Herculaneum is the second largest city that was ruined by Vesuvius (behind Pompeii) and for a long time it had been thought that Herculaneum had been successfully evacuated as there had been little to no signs of human remains in the excavated town. That was until the 1980's when excavations near the beach next to Herculaneum produced the remains of a large number of people. In Pompeii, they didn't know what to do and got caught when the flow came, but in Herculaneum they knew they were in trouble and were evacuating people from the beach. Unfortunately the flow hit Herculaneum too, and caught all the people on the beach - the had nowhere to run to. But because Herculaneum was closer to Vesuvius, the flow behaved differently as it was hotter and it didn't leave any voids, just skeleton remains. It was also said that Herculaneum was better preserved as a result also.
Having done as much of Pompeii as we could, we had two other options in mind for the area - go visit the Vesuvius crater, or Herculaneum. Vesuvius crater was out as the shuttle buses would have stopped running by time time we'd get to where they leave, so Herculaneum it is. This entailed catching the Circumvesuviana train almost halfway back towards Naples, then a walk from the station down the main street towards the ruins. Upon reaching the gate at the ruins we asked a lady standing there do we pay at the booth next to her - she said no, you go town the ramp/path to the building at the end and get tickets there. So we walked down this ramp/path and there to our right was the remains of Herculaneum - we could look right down on them and into them, all of them. So much so, that by the time we got to the ticket building, saw how much tickets were that we decided to go have a think whether we thought paying to go in was worth it, or whether we wouldn't see much more than we could already from the Ramp. The uncovered ruins of Herculaneum are vastly smaller in size than Pompeii, for two reasons - one, the modern city of Ercolano sits atop the covered ruins of Herculaneum, and they've discovered that the Herculaneum ruins deteriorate at a rate quicker than they can try and keep them stable, so no more excavations until they get the rest fixed up. Paying the money, we could be among the ruins and see what we were currently seeing close up - but although they might be better preserved, they weren't going to be much different than Pompeii as its still a Roman city just like Pompeii. In the end - we didn't buy tickets, and it seems neither did a lot of people. Clearly the entrance arch was where once upon a time you did buy tickets, but then they moved it and built a new ticket office (one with handy access to a Tour Bus Parking Lot). Had we had to buy tickets at the entrance arch, we would have; but that walk down the ramp, getting to see all of Herculaneum made us decide not to. We know that they probably need the money to help preserve and stabilise the ruins - equally, we need the money to help us last out our long travels. We were content with having seen Herculaneum from above, and seen what it was about.
Breakfasts were supplied by our accommodation, as mentioned above. The accommodation we had been moved to didn't usually supply it, but arranged it the night before and a man on a motorbike came and delivered it each morning. When we were originally asked what we would like, we were tired and Sasha couldn't quite understand the lady's broken English. I could though, so would relay the options to Sasha. There was a choice of croissant - "White, Choco, Black?" with us choosing Choco - at least we knew it would be a chocolate croissant rather than a burnt one (I think it was just different types of chocolate, i.e. White chocolate, Dark Chocolate). We were then asked which Fruit we would like, there was a choice and the lady didn't quite know the English names for the fruit flavours. "Naranja, Ananas, Abbel?" were some of what it sounded like she reeled off. Italian is similar to Spanish, of which I know a little. I could deduce Naranja was Orange, which I asked for, Abbel must be her trying to say Apple, and Ananas - this was Banana. I asked for an Orange, and I asked Sasha if she wanted a Banana like she'd been having sometimes during the trip for breakfast - she said yes. As for coffee, we were asked how strong we wanted it - normal was our response. Lastly, what time - 8am? We said yes, 8am.
About 8.15am, breakfast had not yet arrived and I suddenly realised Ananas wasn't Banana. Ananas is Pineapple - most places in the world call it Ananas. I told Sasha, who wasn't too impressed that she might now be getting a Pineapple instead of a Banana to have with breakfast. When it all came, it was interesting - the croissants were huge; there was no fruit, it was fruit juice. So Sasha ended up with Pineapple fruit juice, and because they had been out of orange I got apple juice. As for the coffee - well, there was one cup with the coffee in it, and two smaller cups that were empty. We worked out that the Espresso in the cup was to be divided into the two smaller cups, one each. As for "Normal", well it seems the Italians like their Espresso strong!
Otherwise, lunch was had at a little Panini restaurant in the main Pompeii township where we also were given a bucket of free Peanuts - still in their shells. I don't usually eat Peanuts by themselves, but for some reason I shelled and ate a while bunch of them. Dinner was had at a little local and corner Pizza place, who made an exceptional Margherita pizza as well as another one that I chose which had among other things, corn and sour cream on it - I figured a bit of something different as well as having veges couldn't go astray. We asked for two glasses of the house red wine, ended up with a bottle of some slightly fizzy local red wine which was actually quite nice! Slight language barrier, but definitely among the best pizza's I ever remember having. After dinner we were given a shot of Limoncello each - the Amalfi Coast is the home of this lemon liqueur, so it was a taste of things to come!
Summing Up
So jumping ahead slightly as well, we never did visit Naples. We transited this city, saw it out the window of the train, but never actually stepped outside the station there so it doesn't count. Do I feel like I missed out? No. I am very happy that we spent the time in Pompeii. However, getting from Naples to Pompeii, although a bit complex until you know how the Circumvesuviana works, is actually not that hard. It would have been entirely possible to have done Pompeii as a day trip from either Naples or Sorrento as a base, rather than staying in Pompeii town. I think actually that is what most people do, and why Pompeii town isn't that pricey compared to the others. It might have made things a bit easier than lugging our big bags on the crowded Circumvesuviana trains but I like the way we did it in the end.
Having seen both the ruins, there is probably no real need for me to ever go back there myself. I've you've seen it once, well, you've seen it. Pompeii isn't going to change any unless they decide to try and restore part of the city back to its original state pre-eruption - which in some ways wouldn't be a bad idea, doing a little corner of it like that. That's not to say I won't be back - I certainly wouldn't mind it, but we'll see if I ever do. Regardless, I'm very glad that we finally made it there!