Pompeii

Greetings from Pompeii,

We arrived in Pompeii yesterday afternoon after a quite exciting time trying to leave Rome.
We checked out of our lovely little Hotel Amalfi and we walked our luggage down to Termni to collect the hire car. We were surprised to find out that we had been upgraded from a Mercedes A180 hatchback to an enormous black Mercedes E220 sedan. Actually more of a shock really! We were left to work out how to make it go etc, which Andi, of course, soon worked out and we set off following the directions we had been given to get out of Rome and on the road to Pompeii. So far so good we thought. Not so young reader - our instructions were inadequate and we were soon hopelessly lost. We turned on the built in GPS only to find it was automated AND in Italian so we had to find somewhere to park and then plug in Simon (the Tom Tom GPS I'd brought from home). Once Simon was operating we were 'back on track' as they say and we were soon on the A1/E45 to Naples. Blessed sighs of relief all round.

We got to our hotel and checked in and then went for a walk. Pompeii is a nice little town and our hotel almost overlooks the site (and the fun park next door with the imitation Eiffel Tower). We also have an impressive view of Mt Vesuvius in all her looming glory. We had our dinner at Il Principe, the restaurant we had liked so much last time. It was still very good indeed!

Today we left the hotel early so that we had plenty of time to explore the ruins. We hadchecked that the site opens at 8.30, but not today. Today they were having a 'staff meeting' and wouldn't be open until 10.30. Well there was a huge mass of people collecting outside the gates waiting, waiting, waiting - tourists, school groups both primary and secondary, bus tours and us. We finally got in at 11.00. We spent the rest of the day wandering around and looking at the wonders that are Pompeii. We got back to the hotel about 4.00 to rest our feet and have a little lie down.

Tomorrow we drive north to Verona and we will spend two nights there - one day in Verona and one in Venice, before heading to Assisi.


Be in touch soon


Maz, Andi and Marj