Italy (Contiki style) - Pompeii

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We arrived in Rome to start off our 12 day Contiki tour. We had our first meet and greet over dinner. There were 29 people in our tour group and Katia was our tour group leader. Most of the group were from Canada but there were also some other aussies and some people from the U.S, Singapore, South Africa, NZ and Japan. There were 6 couples so we weren’t the only ones! It was exciting to meet everyone and to get to chat to other people after being on our own for almost a month! It was a really fantastic group and we all became great friends over the next 12 days!

We were also pleasantly surprised to be given the suite at the hotel. The bathroom was as big as some of the rooms we stayed in! There was also a lounge room and a king size bed which was a novelty as most other places we have had had twin beds. Unfortunately there was no time for a sleep in as we had an early start and boarded the bus for Sorrento.

Pompeii

The first full day of the tour took us to Sorrento via Pompeii. We were really looking forward to going there as we’d heard so much about it. We weren’t disappointed! Some things were so well preserved. It was fascinating to see the streets, where the gladiator's trained, shops, houses, brothels and an amphitheatre. In the houses we could see frescos and mosaics on the floors and you could see ovens in the bakeries. The brothels were also interesting, especially the graphic fresco “menus” over the doorways (we're sure you can imagine what these showed!). For a city of 2000 people there were a lot of brothels and shops! It as also strange to see lots of signs with the male organ on it - apparently this was considered to be good luck! Most fascinating were the casts of the bodies including a man, dog and pregnant woman. It would have been such a horrible way to die. The backdrop of Vesuvius was quite ominous. We’d like to climb it next time we come (who knows when!).

Francesco, our guide for Pompeii was awesome. He had some hilarious sayings which our contiki group took on for the rest of the trip (Oh, My god - Fantastico - and the best of all - Contiki Party, Yooohooo). Wherever we went from then on and heard a “yoohoo” through the crowd we knew it was someone from our group.

After our tour of Pompeii we had lunch and tasted our first authentic limonchello. Wow that stuff is strong but very yummy! They had stalls with the hugest lemons we’d ever seen - as big as a small rockmelon!

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