Monday 13th September

 

13/09/04    Day 72

A relatively relaxed morning was followed by a walk to the train station, only to discover that we had to pay for the circum whatsit and we had missed all the proper trains. Never mind though.

The journey to Pompeii was a like a glorious metro and enlivened only by trying to explain to another traveller how difficult the Graeco-Italian ferries are!

A fly first indication of what Pompeii was (these days the Unescous had just been newies and news reports which had taken (like no no interest in) an ariel photo at a stall near the station: it looked magic! But the real thing was even bigger!

Normally we divide three days to a city - which is large and with a smattering of historical sites. Pompeii is large, and EVERY SINGLE house had church, temple, forum, wise, Amphitheatre, thermo, time pool, villa, tomb, statue, gate and water reservoir is anomalously preserved historical sites. And we had one hours!

And it was hot - hot and dusty. We ended up, once again, looking like archaeologists returning from a dig.

My favourite parts were the bits which were real in a way that a column or theatre in the middle of amodern city can never be. These were the roads and pavements, the water reservoir (complete with sluices etc), the toilets, the baths and of course, the plaster-casts of bodies caught in the lava, the most effective being the two woman huddled up in a ball.

Points of interest for the day: morning coffee, on the C't Sud, got roped down whilst dancing at a bar (Admit the pose of a ceilidh) and a complicated payment system.

The Circumvesuviana system - Slow, noisy and perhaps unnecessary.

Pompeii: has, much bigger (than I thought), in fact a whole city and impressive. Was it or not very intact. Cor a bit bored of houses after a while, but the colosseum was the best bit.

Such a hot and tiring day - can't believe some people spend 5 hours there.

So after picking up the visit to Mac Donald, we found the proper train station and had a lovely lunch pizza Napolitana then boarded the train to Naples. It was quite short, and we both nodded off.

Heather felt it would be a good idea to see the entire city one last time - in just 1.5 hours. We set off at a fairly good good pace and covered alot of ground, but as we neared the hostel it began to dawn on us that we would not make it. By this time Heather was seriously flagging. I ran up the steps, grabbed our bags, and we ran for the closest metro. Error. By the time we had descended 2 miles beneath the Earth's crust, traversed alive horizontal escalators and two feet ticket gates, we could have walked it! Then to top it off, we had to sit, drenched in sweat, on the slowest metro EVER!

I almost threw in the towel early and went home when the 16:30 (which we arrived in time for) turned out to be running 40 minutes late.

So we got another train and spent an entertaining hour dismantling the IP clock - with several no purpose. What so-ever (except to keep me quiet) and ended up on a bin on a platform in stazione centrale. The scenery was quite constant - we hugged a line of cliffs to our right (East) with just cliffs stretching towards the sea on our left. It's the cruelest irony that the one city where we have slaved over an interest connection and spent hours preparing a plan for hostel hopping - we are swept off the train with promises of beds and kitchens and left with no potion at all.

A mad Italian woman, at least 15 months pregnant proceeded to tell us a million things in aboutminutes, give us 16 beggs and leave us gasping for breath in our room!

We slumped out (secondly - the others don't know we can use the kitchen) to find the supermarket (a mad exciting affair - looks couldanet, coffee yoghurt) and buy a pasta and sauce. And I was upset, as it was the first time we had succumbed to the tinned sauce! thing, but we had done 2 cities that day and we didn't know what the kitchen would be like.

The kitchen turned out to be on the very top floor of a 6 storey building (they are all 6 stories, btw) where you have to walk outside from the lift to the it, across a rooftop veranda, stretching away to either side are endless rooftops and full, extended TV arials - classic Mary Poppins stuff!

The evening back in the room was spent discussing bed-bugs (I think we were jinxed there) and teenage/Mutant ninja-turtles, while I finally got to shower and wash some clothes.

So, in no particular order>>>

x Rome is full of churches. Sometimes there are those huge impressive facades outside from one intersection. Many if not most, are vastly more impressive than many major tourist attractions in other European cities. Yet in Rome they are merely a local church! A few times we pushed one that barely registered (they had to be part of the black out not free standing), yet on a second look and after going inside turned out to to be quite fantastic. Final point on churches: many, even the 'cathedral' look from three sides (or 6 or 2 sides, sometime) like normal residential buildings, and the 'baroque facade' is not not even the usual main entrance.

x A logical progression from churches is Italian woman - a topic I have been giving a lot of thought to. In my wisdom I have concluded that they are not all everybody good looking, but they carry themselves as though they are. This is, in my completely uninformed opinion because the Italian male culture has a general respect for women and not good looking women. But they do not think "I dont like you because you're ugly" but "I don't like you because you're not my type". Therefore every woman behaves as if she is stunning, and therefore they look as though they are. (and may I just add: what a load of twelfty I do speak sometimes).