Penultimate Pompeii

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As the clock winds down on our trip, we turn our attention to Pompeii, the village that was utterly destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The eruption, while terribly destructive at the time, has provided us in the modern world with a frozen glimpse of what life was like back the times of the Romans.

To get there, we took the express train from Rome to Naples. It traveled at over 300km per hour and got us all the way down to Naples in just over 1 hour. Of course, being in Naples we had to have pizza as this was the birthplace of the now famous dish. We went to this little place called Michele's which has been serving pizza since the 1870s. Both of us got our own pizzas - one each of the only two styles they serve (you get tomato&cheese or tomato no cheese) and marveled at the people around us, all of whom were able to finish theirs without hesitation. We struggled, but couldn't quite manage. Great pizza, though!

We then hopped on a commuter train to Pompei. After a half hour of the bumpiest, fullest and most exhaustive ride we thought possible, we finally arrived at our destination. Luckily, it was worth the wait.

Pompei was definitely a sight to behold, with sprawling grounds and looming archways that retold the story of a civilization wiped out by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79 AD. I won't go into a lot of detail about it now, but will say that, even for those who don't have an interest in archaeology or ancient ruins would find it a worthwhile visit. Our guidebook suggested we spend 3 hours there, yet we spent 4 without even realizing it. We managed to find most of the interesting ruins and hopped on the commuter train in our return to Rome.

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