Honeymoon Day 8: Pompeii and Naples

We woke up Monday morning ready to move onto Sicily for our second week in Italy, but first we planned to head to Pompeii for the morning.  We packed up our room and headed to town to catch the Circumvesuviana for a 30 minute ride out to Pompeii.  It was much less stressful without our luggage.  The train was still crowded but not packed since it was late morning.  When we got off at the Pompeii stop we were approached by a lot of people offering tours but we made a right once we got off the train and headed to the entrance of Pompeii.  There are certified tour guides near the entrance and we almost went with one, he kept trying to add more people to keep the price down and the whole process was taking so long we decided to go on without him.  We ended up going with just the audioguides which worked for us, but I would recommend getting a tour guide if possible.

We headed into the entrance and up to a sort of town center where there were multiple alters to the gods and where some of the artifacts are housed.  We quickly realized that Pompeii was much larger then either one of us expected, which is what made me wish we had a tour guide.  I learned about Pompeii in school and read up on it before we went but I didn't really appreciate until we got there that it is truly a city and you can explore a lot of it.  I think I expected that we would only have access to a small portion of it.

View of Pompeii from the entrance

Artifacts dug up from the site

A lava cast of one of the victims

Alter to one of the gods

After we realized how large an area there was to cover, we pulled out a map and made a plan of what we wanted to try and see.  There is a cafeteria where you can get a decent lunch so we did that next before we did a couple hours of sightseeing.  There are several bath houses and brothels that can be toured as well as a theater.  We did a few times get turned around since roads would be blocked off for different reasons and we would have to work our way around.

Bathhouse 

Painting in the town's largest brothel

Looking down one of the city streets

Stairs to nowhere

Oven and mills used to grind wheat

 We spent about two hours walking around to different sites taking in as much as we could.  Our last stop before heading home was the amphitheater and forum.  We enjoyed walking around and fortunately had decent weather for it.  If you are nerds like we are I would recommend to anyone traveling to that part of the world to visit Pompeii.

Greek theater

Forum

By that point we needed to head back to Sorrento and get our luggage.  It had long been decided we would need to find a different way back to Naples then the Circumvesuviana.  An American couple we talked to had taken the ferry from Naples, we decided that made sense since we would need to get to the port anyways to catch our overnight ferry to Sicily.  We took a cab to grab our luggage from the hotel and then headed to the port.  We bought a ticket for the next ferry to Naples, they run pretty frequently even in the off-season and headed to a cafe at the port to wait.

The commuter ferry to Naples was large and comfortable, we were one of maybe 10 people on a ferry that could easily hold 150.  We were able to sit by the window and enjoy the bumpy ride to Naples.  When we arrived at the port we did have trouble finding our ferry.  We asked several people by showing them our tickets who tried to help but we ended up walking further then we needed to with all our luggage.  Eventually we found the office for the TTT ferry and checked in.  Since we had a couple of hours to kill we paid to leave our luggage with them and struck out to find pizza since we were in its birthplace.  I was a little nervous because we had a lot of our valuable items on us and I had read the worst part of Naples was of course by the port and it was dark.  We walked a few blocks and found a pizza place where we sat down for a Margherita pizza, which of course is known for being red, white and green like the Italian flag.  It was delicious, they don't mess around with their pizza in Naples.  

So good

After that we found some wine at a local store and headed back to the ship.  The overnight ferry was one of the parts of the trip that made me the most nervous.  We were decided to go to Italy I looked at our options and I thought the ferry made sense.  The cost of cabin was around $200 which was only slightly more then we were paying for hotel rooms most night so the overnight travel was almost a wash for us.  It took off around 9pm and landed in Cantania on the east coast of Sicily around 7 in the morning.  

When I started looking into our options though I found good reviews for the TTT ferry.  The English translation on the website had been shaky though and I was nervous even though I thought I had booked us an exterior cabin for two that we would have strange roommates or something else unexpected.  Flying from Naples to Sicily was another option but we wouldn't have saved the cost of a hotel room for Monday night and it probably would have taken more of our time since most of the ferry trip we were sleeping.  We got on the boat, which had a lot of people bringing cars on board since there is no bridge from Sicily to the mainland of Italy.  It became obvious quickly that we were probably the only Americans on board, if not the only native English speakers.  It very much had the feel of being off the beaten path, which made it an adventure!

We were the only ones in our room which was just like a small cruise ship cabin, with bunk beds and a small bathroom.  The ship was a bar and we also realized the cheaper tickets we had seen online literally bought people space on the boat and there were a lot of men camping out on bench seats.  

View of the cabin from my bunk

Slot machines in the bar

We sat in the bar for awhile before heading back to our cabin.  The ferry was not a bad way to travel to Sicily since we were able to get a good night sleep while traveling.