Naples, Pompeii and Sorrento

The morning came rather early today.  We had to be up by 6:45am to meet up with the rest of the tour group.  Today we were headed to Naples, Pompeii, and Sorrento. 

As we were checking out, we realized that our transfer bus was already in front of the hotel.  Even though we were on time, we were concerned that the rest of our group was waiting for us.  Thankfully, we were on time, but it was the start of what was to be a number of hiccups, the first that we had experienced on the tour. 

Our transfer bus  took us to the tour office, where we boarded another bus bound for Naples.  We assumed we would be on the same bus as those people from the first leg of the tour who were going  south (some people, like Michel, Lou, Rosey, Marie and Joan, ended their tour in Rome), but ended up on a different bus with people from a different tour altogether.

We stopped quickly at a roadside “Autogrill” (something we were getting used to seeing on tour) before ending up at the port of Naples, where we had a quick walking tour.  For those of you who have never been, Naples is not a pretty city at all.  It was disappointing and I think shocking for those people who were starting their tour here.  In addition, there was plenty of tour bus/luggage confusion, really the first and only breakdowns we had on the entire tour.

From Naples, we went on to Pompeii, which was an excellent site to visit, but we had a guide who was difficult to understand, and whose audio kept going in and out.  But, really, Pompeii did not disappoint.  After a week of seeing ruins that were more or less only the foundations of buildings, Pompeii gave us a sense, for the first time, of how people actually lived during ancient times.  Of course we took a tour of the ancient brothel and the erotic frescos (a Scottish woman on the tour called them the “naughty paintings”), but the most moving images had to be the casts of the people who had suffocated from the ash.

While in Pompeii, we fell in with three women from Oregon, Zoe, Jennifer and Dora, all former college friends who were taking this trip together, and Anders and Lauren from Chicago, a married couple visiting Italy before going off to visit Anders’ family in Norway.  They were tons of fun, and we were happy to make some new friends. 

From Pompeii we drove up an incredibly steep hill with a gorgeous view of Sorrento, a beautiful city up on the cliffs by the Adriatic Sea.  We arrived at dusk, and realized that George and Michelle from our earlier tour were in this hotel with us, but no one else we knew.  We had dinner together, and then went out to walk the main square and to look at the shops of this lovely resort town.  When one goes out on the town, there are many things to see.  Some things are commonplace and some are rather noteworthy.  While the four of us were walking, George and Eric got into a conversation about the street vendors that sell glow in the dark toys at night, all over Italy, but mostly in Rome.  We were curious how someone who was doing this as a job could actually survive, as the demand for the toys that they were hawking was pretty much nonexistent.  We also passed a street performer that sits really still and acts like a statue.  You may have seen these types before, but this one was exceptional, because it had no head.  We felt that it was so clever that it deserved a couple of Euros, simply for the creativity.  As we tossed in our coins, we were thanked with a wave of the hand.  Out of nowhere, a very short, old, curmudgeonly man admonished us in Italian.  I expect that because he was a local and probably saw this performer every day, he felt that we shouldn’t be tipping.  I don’t speak Italian, but It seemed that he was either saying, “Don’t feed the animals” or ”That’s not art and does not deserve a tip.”