Day 68 Some days are diamonds...

On a trip that has now lasted for over 2 months most days have met and far exceeded our expectations, yet there have been some days when things didn’t quite go according to plan. Day 68 was one of those days.

Using Rome as our base our plan was simple; to visit the bustling city of Naples (Napoli) about 200 kms south of Rome. Naples comes with an interesting reputation including being noisy, smelly, rife with pickpockets and controlled by the Mafia. However it is also the town that invented pizza and Neapolitan ice cream so our stomachs were anticipating enjoying the day.

At 7.23 am we boarded a fast train from Rome which arrived on time at 8.52am. We had originally planned to explore Naples and, if we had time later, to visit the historic sight of Pompeii; a city trapped in time when Mt Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 and buried the city under 6 metres of volcanic ash. Because it was already hot and we had arrived early we changed our plans and instead caught the local train, to Pompeii at about 9.30am. We figured that we could visit the site quickly, before it got too hot, and then return for our day in Naples.

Our first problem occurred at the entrance to the site at Pompeii. A sign on the locked gate informed us that the area was closed until 10.30am because of a stop work meeting. As we appreciate a worker’s right to protest, we simply waited with the growing crowd and read our books in patient expectation. By 10.45am the crowd of several hundred people was beginning to get agitated. After a lot of shouting and gate rattling by the more vocal members of the crowd, the word came that the gates would now open at 11.40am (maybe). We could see our morning slipping away so we decided to abandon Pompeii and head back to Naples. As we were leaving a couple of other backpackers asked us if we would like to join them on a visit to Mt Vesuvius itself. Without any thorough investigation into the details of the trip we decided to catch a bus at 11.30am up to the mountain.

The bus took about 40 minutes and arrived at the mountain at about 12.10pm and we immediately began our ascent. It was now over 35 degrees and as we climbed up a steep path, which was literally covered with volcanic rocks and ash, our feet slipped and slid backwards and each step was quite a struggle. By about 1.30pm we reached the edge of the crater- now plugged since its last eruption in 1945. The view of Naples, the sea and the tiny Pompeii below was panoramic if somewhat hazy and visiting a live volcano was certainly a unique experience despite the unpleasant conditions. We descended the hot, dusty and slippery track and caught the bus back to town at about 2pm. Then for some Italian reason the bus took a different route back to Pompeii, and took nearly twice as long which meant that we didn’t get back until about 3.20pm.

It was now too late to enjoy the site of Pompeii so we decided to return to Plan A and head for Naples. However we had just missed a local train so we did not finally make it back to Naples until about 4.20pm.

After leaving the station, at 4.25pm feeling hot, dusty and dry we took one look at the huge urban sprawl of Naples and decided it was just too hard (plus we knew our train options for returning to Rome were running out). As we decided to head back to Rome we noticed that the station was becoming a riot of agitated people because all the fast trains were massively delayed (we guessed another strike).

At 4.38pm we were pleased to catch a slower regional train back to Rome despite having had very little food and of course no pizza or Neapolitan ice cream. However this train was much slower than we had planned…not sure why but lets say that Italians don’t seem to run the most efficient or clean trains in Europe… and we didn’t get back to Rome until about 8.30pm. The last straw came when we were almost crushed by the crowds trying to get on this very late train, as we tried to get off.

All in all it was not the day we had planned but as they say, “Some days are diamonds- and some days are…volcanic rocks!”