POMPEII RUINS

Thursday, April 2, 2009 Pompeii Ruins

We enjoyed our breakfast before heading off with Wallis, one of the girls who is from New York City, towards the train station for our trip to Pompeii. We stopped along the way and purchased bread and bananas for lunch.

The entrance to Pompeii is less than a block from the train station; Pompeii is almost half way back to Naples. We arrived before noon and elected to do our own tour with my memories and the step by step guide in our Rick Steves Tour book. One of the guides attempted to get us to join the group he was putting together; he said he’d take Wallis for free but is was ten euros each for us. Wallis chose to stay with us instead of the young American boys and we began our walk into history. The descriptive guide was great; we stayed on target and took our time whereas the guides were rushing their clients from spot to spot so we were very glad we were doing our own tour. Talking to others later at the Hostel we told them about several sites that their guide had not shown them; surprisingly one was the Brothel which is one of the top sites.

Several of the sites were now open; including the public baths that were closed in 2006; but the House of the Vetti was closed for restoration. Too bad it was closed as it is one of the largest and best preserved private homes. One of the last sites we located was the beautiful Temple of Isis; very well preserved and so beautifully constructed. We finished in time to make the 3:30 return train towards Sorrento.

Tom, the Australian lad had lost his wallet today in Sorrento. This evening the wallet was returned and everything was in it. A store owner had found his plastic room key in the wallet and ridden his moped over from Sorrento to Sant’ Angello to return the wallet; really made everyone feel better about the world in general and Italian people in particular. Tom had seen a man break a window, reach in and take a backpack from a car in Naples during the middle of the day. One of the reasons he left Naples and came further south to our corner of heaven at Seven Hostel. At 7:30 we all went down to have another five euro plate together and later Wallis and Tom joined the other younger set for the evening as they arrived from their day’s activities after we toddled off to bed and our computers.