cosmic_llin

Wednesday:

carawj and I got up at stupid o' clock to get our train into town to get our train to the airport. Train was delayed. Aargh! We sat in the station for ages, but eventually got going, and after a mad dash from King's Cross to St Pancras, we just about made it onto the Gatwick train. Everything was pretty smooth going from there, the flight was nice (OMG, we flew over the actual Alps... incredible... you can't even imagine the scale of them until you see it...), we got a bus to the train station without much trouble (on the bus ride I saw a carousel horse, just hanging out on someone's balcony), we tried the super-fun Italian trick of just walking into the traffic to cross the road, and did not get smooshed... there was some confusion about trains but in the end we got one easily enough. I saw Vesuvius for the first time from the train! And it was baking hot... wow... seems so far away with the weather we've been having now... anyways, we got to Salerno and were just in time for the ferry to Amalfi, which was just gorgeous - it goes all along the Amalfi coast and it's all so beautiful, tiny little villages wedged halfway up mountains, and little beaches that you can only get to by boat...

We arrived in Amalfi in the middle of the afternoon. Amalfi is a lovely little town, very picturesque and Italian-y, the beach is tiny and then you turn around and in about ten paces you're in the town proper, and there's a lovely piazza, and a narrow little main street going up the hill, and all the shops just sell limoncello or ice cream or sounvenirs. Yes, it was very touristy. It wasn't so bad when we arrived, but by the time we left it was packed.

Our hotel was hidden up a tiny side street, and it was pretty nice considering how reasonably priced it was. There was no view, but our window looked down onto a back street, which was fun for people watching. Also, minibar! I don't usually stay in proper hotels so this was a novelty.

We went out for our first ice-cream (sorbet for me) of the trip, from a kiosk on the piazza, and had a look in the church, which was very lovely, and had dinner at a place on the main street, which was nice but probably the least impressive meal we had all trip. Then I seem to recall we went to bed early because we were exhausted!

Thursday:

The breakfast at the hotel was very nice, and we had plenty. After breakfast we got the bus up the hill to Ravello, which was a bit terrifying. It was a small local bus, and it went up the only road possible, which was basically just a flat strip hugging the side of the mountain, with occasional sudden sharp turns. Anyone who has driven on the Sychnant Pass, it was a bit like that, but ten times worse. The views were incredible but Cara was hiding for most of it so she missed them.

Ravello was well worth the effort, though. Stunning views of the mountains and other villages, a lovely little art gallery/shop, and a nice cafe with outdoor seating, where we sat for several hours and just chatted and people-watched. We got there quite early, so it was fun to watch the other tourists arrive in dribs and drabs until the whole place was packed. Mostly it was tour groups, made up almost entirely of American pensioners being led on a forced march through the piazza and back again.

(Oh, one random thing, there was quite a fancy expensive shop selling mostly jewellery and things, and in the window they had a framed picture of Commander Data... wanted to ask why but didn't... I guess either they're big fans or he went there once...?)

After our extended sit down, we wandered up to the Villa Cimbrone (I think...?). It was a lovely walk, but there was a charge to get in so we just looked around the free bits of the gardens and then came down again.

By the time we decided to head back to Amalfi, lots of other people were doing the same. Not sure if it was to do with the building work going on further up the hill, but the bus was very delayed, we waited for more than an hour, and just about forced our way onto it when it came. (We'd been more-or-less first in the queue but after a man appearned from nowhere and pushed his way on announcing 'I've been waiting for forty minutes!', it sort of descended into a free-for-all...). We were packed like sardines onto the bus which made the drive down the hill even scarier than the ride up, but mercifully we could see less, what with being squashed into the middle of the bus. We finally arrived back in Amalfi, went for another ice cream/sorbet, and popped back to the hotel to freshen up.

At this point we had an accidental nap and woke up at dinner time, which was a bit disorienting... but never mind. We'd had a busy day! We decided to look along the seafront for somewhere to eat, and found a lovely pizza restaurant. The pizzas were enormous and delicious, and mine was, up to that point, probably the best pizza I'd ever had. We had limoncello to finish and then had a little wander along the seafront before heading back.

Friday:

The hotel provided doughnuts for breakfast. I am only human, so that's what I had.

We knew we had to get the boat to Salerno to get the train to Pompei to meet the rest of the gang sometime in the afternoon, so, searching for a quick-ish thing to do with our morning, we decided to walk to the next village, Atrani. Ten minutes and a hair-raising tunnel experience later, we discovered that there's pretty much nothing there. So we came back and had another ice cream.

Somewhat bored of Amalfi and having got tired of poking fun at the tour groups, we decided to get the Salerno boat early and see if there was anything interesting there. At first it appeared not, we got a taxi to the centre but there was nothing much there but some quite grotty cafes. In a bit of a grump, we decided to look for the sea, and discovered a nice promenade going all the way along it. The pier where we'd got off was right opposite the train station, and we could see it from where we were, so we decided to walk that way slowly, with lots of stops because Cara's feet were hurting.

It was less of a walk than it had looked, fortunately, and when we got there we decided to go and sit on the pier for a bit, which is when we discovered the padlocks. All along the railings on the pier, couples had attached padlocks with both their names written on them. Some of them were so old the names had worn away, and some of them were clearly very recent. It seemed like a really sweet tradition. I guess maybe it started with sailors and their girlfriends when they went off to sea? Anyway, it was cool, and even cooler when we looked at all the names and found some queer couples in there. Yay.

After that we got the train to Pompei and met up with

dogearedhelen. There was some kind of music festival going on in the piazza, so we listened to that for a while as we waited for the others, (

silly_cleo,

jenepel,

apotropaios,

jakera and Hannah) who had flown from Gatwick that day, to arrive. They took quite a while, and eventually arrived with a saga about missed trains and wrong lines and wrong stations and all sorts of drama that I was quite grateful to have skipped out on! Sorry guys... ;P Anyway, once they arrived we pretty much went straight to dinner because everyone was starving, and it was fine, but not the best!

The hostel was great too, small and friendly and with a puppy! Cara and I shared a room with Helen and Andrew, and Jon, Jenn, Cleo and Hannah were in the other room.

Saturday:

Since we arrived so late on Friday, we had waited until Saturday morning to pay, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that it was less than we'd thought. The owner was very nice and explained that although we'd booked a five-person room, there were only four people using it, and since the only difference is that he puts an extra camp-bed in, it wasn't fair to charge us the extra. He was also very disapproving of our plan to visit the Boscoreale Antiquarium, and insisted we shouldn't bother.

We weren't doing that on that day anyway, Saturday was Pompeii day! We walked to the ruins, many of us purchasing hats on the way, and then spent the whole day wandering round them. It was quite exciting having so many Classics types around, it was like getting a free, personalised tour. I now know what Apotropaios means. The Villa of Mysteries was awesome. There were cute puppies! We sang Lady Gaga in the theatre. There is no way I can do justice to how awesome Pompeii was, so, just, everyone go, if you ever get the chance. (Also, BF fans, it makes listening to Fires of Vulcan much cooler...)

We went for ice cream (I had crisps) on the way back, and then out to dinner. And it was good.

Sunday:

This was our day for visiting the Antiquarium. This was what gave Cara the idea for the trip in the first place - there was a special exhibition of the body casts from Pompeii, and how they make them, and it was also a pretty big collection of them all in one place (comparatively big, it wasn't like a cavern full of them, just a small room). After some confusion and wandering back and forth, we got the train, got out in the right place, and set out for the museum.

We walked pretty far, and it all started to look less and less like a museum-y sort of area. Eventually, finding ourselves in a bit of a rough-looking housing estate, we concluded that we must have gone wrong somewhere. Just then some small boys on bikes rode up to us and asked if we wanted the Antiquarium, and offered to take us there. And it turned out, the museum housing this important exhibition actually was just in the middle of nowhere. Odd.

It was totally worth the trek. The museum as a whole was pretty small, but very interesting - I really liked the cases of mirrors and combs and hair decorations and things - for me the most interesting thing about history is how people were still pretty much the same as they are now, and I like looking at all the trivial bits and pieces that people had. (There was also some hilarity concerning a speculum, but since when I was making my notes for this I only wrote "Speculum!!", I no longer remember exactly what was so funny, but I'm pretty sure it involved Cleo... Anyone?

The bit with the casts was upstairs. It was fascinating, and very sad. I learned a lot about techniques for making the casts, and the sorts of things they can learn from them, which was cool, but really when you come down to it, you're looking at people's final moments of terror, frozen forever. It was weird, but I was really glad we went.

After that we went to Herculaneum, stopping for lunch on the way. Herculaneum is a similar sort of thing to Pompeii, but less of it has been excavated, so we expected to only spend a couple of hours there. We ended up staying there practically until closing time. According to those in the know it's actually quite different to Pompeii but to me as a non-Classicist it seemed like more of the same, but that didn't make it any less interesting. A lot of it did seem better preserved. Cara got very excited about roofs and things. I thought the baths were very interesting, and I seem to remember some sort of awesome picture, somewhere... it was brilliant, anyway. We played Marco Polo. And we left as it was getting dark, and as we went back up the hill to leave, we saw a man with a torch, searching the ruins for stragglers.

At dinner, we discovered chilled, fizzy red wine, which surprised us all a bit but is apparently a speciality of the region.

Monday:

Last day! We got a train back to Naples, and headed for a pizza restaurant that Helen had heard was amazing. It took quite a while to find it, but, oh my God, it was so totally worth it. It was called Pizzeria Sorbillo (I think?) and the pizzas were enormous, I mean, they were falling off the plates on all sides and the plates were pretty huge... we got there just before the rush and managed to get a table for all of us, and oh - I thought the one in Amalfi was good but this pizza was seriously incredible.

After that we went to the Naples National Archaeological Museum. We were all pretty tired so I don't think we did it justice, but it was really interesting all the same. The Classicists had fun playing 'Whose Head Is This?' in a room full of busts, and Jenn and I wondered about dice and glass in the Ancient world.

After sitting outside a cafe for a while, we got the bus to the airport, caught our extremely crowed flight, endured EasyJet employees trying to sell us things all the way to London ("Kids, if nobody buys this teddy, it's going to suffocate and die. Ask your mummies and daddies.") and then, finally, went home!