Blogs from Pompei, Campania, Italy, Europe - page 6

Geo: 40.7492, 14.5007Amalfi and Positano are picturesque and quite lovely...probably a haven of beauty and awe for those who don't have seaside beaches as part of their lives, but as usual for aussies it's just 'aaawww cute"...i gave up looking for great beaches outside of australia some years agoNaples is DODGY! i've heard "be careful in southern italy, it's dangerous" but that's actually quite inaccurate...the reality is "don't ever go to napoli, you will get shot"...the locals can't wear helmets when riding bikes or scooters because it will be assumed they are 'hiding' and possibly on their way to a drive-by shooting, so someone will shoot them first...other than the impracticality of dying from a stray bullet while on holiday, increasing your chances of having a bad day, Napoli actually looks like a shithole - so ... read more

Today we signed up for a crew tour and visited the ruins of Pompeii. From the second you enter the site you know its going to be something different, as parts of it have been restored but most of it is original, right down to the slates on the roofs and the paint on the walls. Its somewhere I'd always heard about and never thought I would go, so to actually walk round it was amazing. The whole city is pretty much intact, with the exceptions of the roofs, so you can walk down the streets and see all the houses, shops, public facilities etc and see how similiar it is to todays cities. We even saw the Roman version of Mcdonalds and a whore house (complete with oversize willy's on the outside). Even little things ... read more

I’ll start in reverse, firstly The Chavvy. For those of you not familiar with the term chavvy or chav let me explain, there is no oxford dictionary definition but if there was it would go something like this. Chav-a person who wears some type of imitation designer label shirt with the name of that label written over the shirt in the biggest writing possible so to let others know what they are wearing “a designer”, often accompanied with this is a baseball cap worn at 45 degrees of the angle it should actually be worn at and several items of cheap looking jewellery. Chavs are usually heard before they are seen as they are usually accompanied by some form of rap/hip hop music being played from their phone or if they are a more ‘up market’ ... read more

Sunday 19th June 2011 Sorrento to Pompeii Short ( in theory ) drive from Sorrento to Pompeii where the campsite is within two minutes walk of the ancient city. However we had not factored in the fact that what seemed like the whole population of Naples had decided that it would be a good day to go to the seaside. Even though we were headed toward Naples the ensuing chaos affected traffic flow in both directions. Particularly fascinating were the scooters and motorcycles that wove in and out of the congested traffic at speed often missing oncoming vehicles by inches. Normal traffic rules do not appear to apply here. In one spot traffic joining from the right and turning left across the carriageway appeared to assume right of way and when challenged by me edging forward ... read more

Day 51 Tivoli Gardens Villa d’Este En route from Rome to Pompei we had been advised to pop in on Tivoli. An interesting historic town in itself, but mainly we wanted to see the gardens of the Villa d’Este. The sat nav took us a very interesting route around the very narrow streets of Tivoli. It kept saying the villa was near, but we were unable to access it. We decided we had to park up and walk. However parking also proved difficult, thank goodness we have a small camper, we would never have been able to stay otherwise. The villa is right in the pedestrian area of the town (no wonder the sat nav had problems). It was on the site of emperor Hadrian’s villa, but is now an example of a 1550’s villa of ... read more