Pompeii

The drive to Pompeii was only supposed to be an hour and a half long, but during the drive there was some construction which led us on a detour. The detour was not labeled well and we ended up doing a complete circle before retracing our steps and trying again and finally making it back onto the SS-18. The driving we have seen since we have gone south in Italy is absolutely appalling. Julie figures they just hand out car keys and driver’s licenses to anyone over a certain age without ever explaining any of the rules of the road. They don’t follow any street signs; stop signs, speed signs, traffic lights (they do well over double the limit). They even make up imaginary lanes (two lanes of traffic where there should only be one) and pass anyone at any time on any side no matter how busy it is, even if it means they have to drive into oncoming traffic forcing everything heading the opposite direction to a sudden stop. When pulling out of a driveway they pull out until half the car is on the street and then they look to see if any cars are coming. One way streets apparently have no meaning at all. Add in illogical street layouts and the ability to park anywhere (again not following the signs) and it makes for a very nerve racking drive (I’ve never heard Julie swear so much, she compares it all to being in a bumper car rink where the point isn’t to crash into other cars but to narrowly avoid one collision after another). We did, however, manage to arrive at the campsite unscathed. It was around 2pm and we both felt it was still early enough to venture to the archeological site of Pompeii. Camping Spartacus is located almost directly across from the entrance to the city of Pompeii, so close we didn’t bother marking the van with the GPS. Before I go on, I should mention that Julie and I were disappointed with the city built up around the famed ruins. The town was disgusting, crowded, filled with strays and completely surrounded the ruins. I guess Julie and I expected it to be located away from the city, in a rural setting. I should also mention that the garbage strike was still on and didn’t help with the appeal.

Once inside the gates, you’re left on your own to figure out how to go about exploring Pompeii. It is so large that you could spend an entire day wandering. With this in mind, Julie and I consulted the provided map and planned out a route. It is hard to believe that this city was buried once you start walking its many streets. Everything is mostly in ruins, but there is still a lot to see and much that has remained. Like paintings on the walls outside of shops, or paintings inside houses, they even had graffiti. The streets have elevated sidewalks and every time you approach an intersection, they have elevated stepping stones to keep it level but still allow for carts to pass through, they call these Zebra crossings. The sidewalks are elevated for one very good reason, to keep from walking in the refuse that was dumped in the streets. Julie and I were very impressed with the whole city and despite the modern city at its walls, you felt like you were in a different place. The best preserved building was actually a small house located a fair distance from the main city. The tiled floor was still intact, paintings and large storage containers could be seen. This was also were we saw our first preserved person (we later saw the dog and many others things locked up behind a cage). It was upon our arrival to the coliseum that Julie realized she had lost her pedometer (The pedometer counts her steps which is how we determine how many km’s we walk in a country). Since this was important to us, we decided to back track our steps hoping to find it. Unfortunately we did not end up finding it, but on the upside we can now walk around Pompeii with out the use of a map. The map of Pompeii that was provided for us came with a scale, so Julie and I managed to calculate the distance with a piece of string and the route we took.

We had intended to spend two nights at the Pompeii campsite, visiting Naples the second day, but since we didn’t see the reason to visit Naples (high crime, busy and dirty city) just for a slice of pizza we stayed at the campsite doing our laundry and catching up on our writing. We ended up spending another day mainly because we had the chance to get everything clean inside the van. So this meant spending Valentines day in Pompeii rather than Rome as we had originally planned. This years Valentines Day could not compete with last years, as Julie and I believed we had some spare money lying around and we went out to Ruth Chris’ Steak House in Mississauga (that dinner was well over $100). Nor could it compete with the previous years. So this year we took it down a bit, a candle light dinner (we ate spaghetti) with some wine. We actually spent the time talking about our previous Valentine’s experiences. We did attempt to find a nice place to eat out, but most things were expensive or not what we would consider romantic. After dinner we realized for the first time that we could no longer charge the laptop. We rely so heavily on our laptop that this problem will have an impact on our trip. Needless to say our moods soured. 

Julie discovered that we had a new friend the moment we arrived at the campsite. A small black dog hung around our van looking for affection and food until the day we left. We believe the dog belonged to the campsite owners, though we can’t be sure as there are so many strays in Italy. The buried city of Pompeii had 4 dogs wandering its ruins, following anybody that had given them food. So three days were spent in Pompeii and we head off to Rome for another three days, although we know we won’t be spending much time in the van. If we had more time and money we would have ventured to the Island of Capri.