Pompeii

On our last day in Rome we took a day trip to Pompeii.  This involved catching a train to Naples then changing to a local train to Pompeii – a journey of less than 2 hours one way.   We got to Naples easily enough and then we made our way through a very crowded train station to the local Pompeii train.  About 10 minutes into the journey Bob realised someone had lifted his wallet from his front pocket.  It was gone and he never felt a thing.  Pickpockets are very good in Napoli.  This certainly put a bit of a damper on the trip but we tried to put it out of our mind so we could enjoy Pompeii.

We found Pompeii an amazing place, not as grand as Ephesus, Patra or Tilos, but a real town with its ‘fast food’ shops, brothels and everyman houses.  The city was vast but many of the streets were closed off to the tourist.  Still we spent hours poking into houses, gardens and ruins.  The mosaics and frescoes were fascinating.

 

 

 

 

That's Mt Vesuvius in the distance

Scattered around the grounds were large metal sculptures which took me awhile to realise were modern not ancient.  I really liked these pieces but felt a bit ambiguous about mixing modern sculpture with this ancient site. 

 

 

 

We returned to Naples and decided we better report the loss of Bob’s wallet.  We found the police at the train station and I immediately felt I was in a scene from Inspector Montalbano.  Naples is the pickpocket capital of Italy yet the police at the train station seemed quite out of the limit of their ability to fill out the one page form to report the incident.  But it was all done with good humour and lots of carefree laughter.  Finally after three tries and about 45 minutes we had a copy of the report.

Back to our hotel in Rome for a good night’s sleep after a tiring day. In hindsight we should have just taken an organised bus tour.