sorrento and rome

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Hello alll

we are now in dubai with the mcinerneys after a couple of days in rome. Rome was very interesting and thankfully not that busy. We had been warned about the long lines to get in to places like the colosseum but we basically walked straight in. It's a truly amazing building especially when you try to visualise it in its complete state with 50000 screaming fans. its about the size of subi oval but apparently could be filled or emptied in less than 15 minutes. Most amazing given that it is nearly 2000 years old.

we didnt manage to do too much more than that in rome - i think we had reached our limit and a couple of days downtime was needed - i even slept through half of the open top bus tour (with a backdrop of rome's frantic traffic.)

the week prior was spent in and around sorrento. we had a lovely spacious room that overlooked the narrow shopping mall just off the main drag, great for people watching - even if most of them were overweight poms on package tours!!!

we took the bus to positano one day - better than any rollercoaster in my opinion. the road hugs the cliffs about 100m straight down to the sea, and for about 20min you lurch from side to side as the driver does his best impression of juan fangio. in italy they use the horn instead of the brakes. when you get to a blind corner you give a quick blast of the horn and keep going!!!!

Positano was well worth the white knuckles - the whole town clings to the cliffs, with a pebbly beach at the foot leading to warm clear water. Spent the afternoon there and then opted for the ferry back to sorrento

such a good day we did it all again the next day!!!

Naples was a different matter entirely!

Georgie was very keen to see pompeii so we took the train there one morning (bit of a blur - cant remember WHICH morning exactly!!) Fascinating, particularly when you can look up at vesuvius and see just how much of it "blew away " in the eruption. Got a real sense of the terror of that day.
most of the artefacts have been removed to the museum in naples - bit sad to 'destroy' such a well preserved site but this way it probably preserves the individual artefacts better. so we continued into naples on the train - another half hour. i dont know what it was about naples but i felt a constant unease while we were there. Whether it was the frequent warnings of pickpockets, the graffiti everywhere, or the dirt and rubbish at every turn, but it led us to break our golden rule of the holiday - we went to mcdonalds for lunch - what a peculiar safe haven!!
the museum itself was odd to say the least - very difficult to find our way around (no, sorry the maps are 'finished") and in the end the things we most wanted to see werent there anyway - they were at pompeii, in a section we hadnt been to. ah well cant win em all!!
ps our pockets were not picked!!

sorry no photos on this blog i'm using someone elses computer....

next stop is thailand and then home in 1o days

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