ROME TO NAPLES (INCLUDING POMPEII)
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| Near Central Naples |
22 August – We are now heading southbound by train from Roma Termini to Napoli Centrale at 10am ETA 11.10am. (As a little exercise accentuate the word Centrale to the way the Italians would pronounce it –“ Centraaa – lee”). Picture this…. Me and Tony Italianizing our Aussie accents while enjoying the views of the countryside. Thankfully there weren’t too many people in our carriage so we had plenty of opportunity to practice our language skills (LOL). And the inside of the train was quite flash too I must say.....
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| Our train to Naples |
Our usual practice, or more habit, is that we book all our accommodation On-line. Naples would be no different. The only downside to On-line bookings is that you have absolutely no idea of what the locality is like, the terrain, the population, the crime rate etc. It is the chance you take if you have no idea or have never been there. The other alternative is to spend hours doing your research and checking out all the reviews and sitting in front of a computer/laptop screen, when you could be out and about enjoying a country you may never see again. The choice is easy – sightseeing vs. computer. (OK!! .some of you may prefer to be in front of the computer screen – we’re OK with that).
Anyway, to cut a long story short our booking experience in Naples compared a little to that of Marseilles. The only BIG (bloody glaringly BIG) difference was that the hotel in Naples was really, really beautiful and the service and friendliness of the staff was impeccable.
Hotel Tiempo had undergone a major renovation inside and out, was in a quiet area, had a rooftop bar and chill out space with views over terracotta roofs towards the city high-rises and the harbour, included a buffet breakfast, very reasonably priced and within walking distance (with some obstacles) to Napoli “Centraaa-lee” station. The hotel was situated in a part industrial, part commercial area between the city and the harbour/wharves and also within walking distance to the local train station for trains to Pompeii. Therefore our choice was obvious.
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| Rooftop at Hotel Tiempo |
So given all the pluses (+, +, +, +, +) you could forgiven by asking, “HOW does Naples and Marseille compare??”
Sure the accommodation in Naples was outstanding compared to that in Marseille, and we are still having nightmares about that place, and if you want to refresh your memories of our time there check out our Blog. (http://tonyandliztraveladventures.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/france-marseille.html
But let me explain. Those “some obstacles” mentioned before were in fact – Rubbish. I’m not just talking some loose tissues, or plastic shopping bags flying around in a calm breeze like butterflies, or a few tossed soft-drink cans or cigarette butts on the footpaths. NO!! - The rubbish I’m talking are large mounds of rubbish – old food scraps, large green plastic bags bursting at the seams, discarded clothing and all the imaginable household waste you could imagine – just lying in piles in the street. Much of it rifled through by hungry roaming dogs and left strewn in the streets.
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| Rubbish in the streets |
It was disgusting and it was just like a truck had pulled up and just dumped anything and everything wherever there was a spot on the side of the roads, and appeared to be more like rubbish tips than carriage ways. The photos tell the story and at the end of this blog I will tell you about some rubbish we spotted that will turn your stomach – just disgusting. (**)
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| Pedestrian Walkway |
Thinking about it Naples and Marseille are quite similar. They are both major shipping ports across the Mediterranean Sea from northern Africa making them desirable locations for human traffickers, drug smugglers and other unsavoury characters, and we saw a lot of those, high crime rates etc! And this is where the difference is and where the rubbish problem starts. Both cities also have a high level of official corruption in private and government circles. But the big difference here in Naples is the Mafia infiltration into businesses and government (hearsay, of course). Hearsay has it about long term industrial action by the waste companies (Mafia owned) and government contracts by corrupt officials, and it is spilling into the streets literaly (literaly = “litter-ally”). So the rubbish keeps piling up.
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| Graffitied buildings and rubbish strewn footpaths |
But Hotel Tiempo was nice!!! Just a shame that once you were out the door the scene was very different. Enough that any respectable loving Napoli Pizza lover would have been put off FOREVER!!
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| Atrium inside Hotel Tiempo |
Anyway, the horror of seeing all the rubbish didn’t stop us from venturing back into the city area and making our way around many of the old cobblestones streets, little cafes and markets. It was a wonder we saw anything at all because we were all the while looking down, side stepping and dodging the rubbish under foot.. (Come to think of it! This could have been a good opportunity to spend time in front of a computer screen and in air-con instead, LOL, but NO this would not be Tony and Liz’s Travel Adventures if we did ).
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| Roadside Fruit and Vege vendor |
But the main reason we were here in Naples was to travel to Pompeii for a day trip and to see the ruins caused by Mt Vesuvius when it erupted in 79 A.D. and covered Pompeii in lava and ash.
Naples is rich in history and there is no denying that. It is said that its origins began over 5000 years ago, and sometime between then and the 4th Century BC the Greeks settled and called it “Neapolis”. Here they quarried the local stone “Tufa”, building city walls some of which are still standing to this day. By the time of the reign of Augustus (27 BC to 14 AD), aqueducts and connecting tunnels were built under the city. With the increasing population in 1629 a new aqueduct was built but by 1884 it was closed because of a Cholera epidemic. The good side is that during the 2nd World War the tunnels were used as air raid shelters, but as a functioning aqueduct with tunnel systems under the city, they were never used again.
Since that time the aqueducts and tunnels have been “obstructed by rubble thrown into the wells illegally”….the words taken verbatim from a tourist brochure (….and so the rubbish keeps piling up into the streets). Since those days some sensibility has prevailed and historians and archaeologists lobbied to open the tunnels and aqueducts making it possible for tourists and non-claustrophobes to venture into the bowels of the city to see these sites first hand. We come into the claustrophobe category, thank you, so no venturing down into any narrow caves for us. Does Cholera lie dormant by any chance??
Look, don’t get us wrong, Naples is charming. Did we manage to get lost? Yeah, only once (maybe three times).
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| "Out of Order" |
The following day we caught the Metro Linea train from the most charming station you could ever see (NOT). Just when we thought we were on a roll we get to the station only to find that the Ticket Machine was out of order….and of course a CLOSED ticket office. This building closely resembled a horse stable covered in Graffiti – and the horse did the Graffiti!!). In actual fact the word graffiti is derived from a Latin word “Graffito” used to describe etchings and wall paintings and we were excited that tomorrow our journey would take us to see perhaps one of the oldest forms or Graffiti “Art work” on the walls of buildings in Pompeii.
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| Warning: There is no similarity between this Graffiti and that found in Pompeii. This is actually a Metro Linear station in Naples. |
Anyway, frustrated at not being able to get a ticket, we jumped on the first train that came in only for the sake of getting off the station. Our destination - Mergellina, the seaside and Marina.
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| Mergillini Station - Front View |
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| Mergillini Station Concourse |
Mergellina station was in stark contrast to the one we caught the train from - what a difference half an hour train trip makes!! And the village is just what you would imagine a seaside Italian town to look like. The weather beaten buildings and houses were mostly in narrow laneways, stone and wrought iron stairways and balconies with flowering hanging baskets in an array of colours.
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| Narrow Laneways between Mergillini and Chaiai |
Our adventure took us down to the beach, except it wasn’t really a beach. It was more like rocky outcrops and a strange thing was that people were lying all over the rocks like walruses basking in the sun. True!
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| Mergillini Marina with Castel Del'Ovo in the distance |
We walked the promenade (Villa Comunale) and into the Chaiai area with its narrow streets and staircases that led up to hilly streets that overlooked the Bay of Naples and Castel Del-Ovo in the distance.
And we just took in the sites and the sunshine and the heat – it was just too much.
As a respite we ventured towards the shops where TJ spotted himself a pair of Slides in a window – and in the style of shoe he spotted in Morocco. And they had them in his size. We could only guess there was a clearance sale of large shoes. It was kind of odd really because the shop was a convenience store that sold hot food, drinks, rail tickets. Selling shoes? Very enterprising! You never know who could be looking for shoes after a hot day at the seaside !! LOL.
Back to the station and back to the city, our day was done. Tomorrow after a nice buffet breakfast we head to Pompeii. In the meantime we don’t dare draw back the curtains in our hotel room for fear that the waste might block out the views.
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NAPLES TO POMPEII
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| Map of the Ancient Streets of Pompeii with Mt Vesuvius in the background |
Next morning we were back at the Napoli Centralia station looking for the Circumvesuviana train to Pompeii. Easy!. And the station was much nicer than the one from yesterday.
Now this was a nice journey. The train skirted the coastline and stopped at only a few stations along the way. We could see Mt Vesuvius in the distance knowing we were close. The trip was only about half an hour or so giving us time to keep practising our Italianised Australian. But what we didn’t expect were the long queues that greeted us on our arrival at the entrance of Scavi di Pompei. We estimated the wait here would be much longer than our train trip. And we guessed that our arrival somehow coordinated at the same time as just about every other train and tour bus on that day, at that particular spot, at that moment in time.
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| Entrance to the Scavi di Pompei |
Anyway, taking an opportunity as it arises, Tony and I wandered (“shimmied” and “slid” being better descriptions) over to the ticket office, looking over here, pointing over there, making out like we were a couple of dumb-asses. LOL, LOL we managed to bypass at least a half dozen tour groups and only waited around 5 minutes.
With our 11 Euro “self guided” tickets in hand, bottles of water and the crowds behind us it was amazing to think we were stepping back into a city once buried by the volcanic ash and pumice of Mt Vesuvius. They call it “The Eruption of 79 A.D.” Apparently the eruption of the “still active’ volcano that buried Pompeii happened so quickly that it preserved the city giving a snapshot of what life was like back in the day. Archaeological excavation on the site began in the mid 1700’s and continues to this day.
I was here in back in 1977 and the most noticeable detail today was the sheer scale of the excavations since 30 odd years ago. Pompeii was on our “Bucket list” for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, it was because of the mystique that surrounds this place together with some of the stories and memories that have stayed with me from all those years ago, including the seeing artifacts, wall paintings, plants that had been grown from seeds found in situ, and gruesome but true – preserved human bodies that had been buried in the volcanic ash.
Secondly, because both Tony and I are fans of Pink Floyd, we wanted to walk in and around that ancient Amphitheatre where the band was filmed playing their surrealistic and futuristic sounding music. It was just them, no audience except for their “Roadies” and sound checkers. And all those years back, yes, all 35 years ago, the amphitheatre was “out of bounds” for tourists. This was the big chance to actually go into the amphitheatre and picture Pink Floyd playing in the centre.
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| TJ "The Gladiator" (on the left) walking into the Amphitheatre |
When the film was made the site was still raw i.e. the Amphitheatre had not been completely excavated, there were mounds of earth out from the centre of the field, and any semblance of seating was covered with overgrown grass and ash. Really there didn’t appear to be any seating at all. Perhaps this was as a result of damage from the volcano. But in any instance what we saw was a very different looking place to photos and pictures we’d seen. Another big stand-out ….the amphitheatre was so very much smaller than we thought it to be. But it was AMAZING as we had expected.
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| Free flowing natural spring water with an ancient tap (?) |
There are so many other things to describe in Pompeii and there are still many places that are out of bounds. Some of the memorable ones are: the natural cool spring water fountains that can be found in various places on the site; the floors covered in Mosaics (much like those we saw at Volubolis in Morocco (check our Volubilis Blog) - marble columns; alfresco paintings on the walls; the bath houses; the vineyards that have been grown from seeds found during excavation; and so on. I was surprised that I still vividly remembered those same attractions even after all those years.
I could go on but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So here is a selection of the best of our “Ancient” photos.
Enjoy!!
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| Stone streets with gouges made from Chariot Wheels |
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| Continued Restoration and Stabilisation work |
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| View into 79AD house |
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| Outside walls of Pompeii with stabilising scaffolding |
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| Views to Mt Vesuvius |
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| Old Ruins amongst Ancient Ruins (LOL, LOL) |
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| Scavi di Pompei with Mt Vesuvius as a backdrop |
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| Every little bit of shade taken to shelter from the heatwave. 38 degrees in the shade |
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| An ancient Pompeii Via |
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| Grape Vines grown from seeds found on site |
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| Cemetary and Crypts |
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| Ancient Steps (we saw similiar ones at Macchu Pichu) |
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| Roman Inscriptions (something about Peter & David ??) |
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| Wall painting of a serpent |
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| Public (very public) toilets |
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| Inside the Amphitheatre with other Pink Floyd fans !! |
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| Marble columns |
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| Terracotta Pottery |
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| Mythical Horse Graffiti |
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| Bath house |
Now how bizarre is this?.....
Our visit to Pompeii was on the 24th August, 2012. The Eruption of 79 A.D. occurred on the morning of 24th August, 79 A.D.
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| Information Board with details of the 79AD Eruption |
Unlike other planned events during our trip, such as being in Pamplona on 7th July, and Nancy, France on 5th September, there was no way in this world that we had actually sat down and said, “Let’s be in Pompeii on the anniversary of its destruction”. But here we were, on the 24th August, 2012…. 1,933 years after the event … kind of spooky. And could account for the reason why there were so many visitors at the entrance to the site.
We still had some energy left enough to venture down to the souvenir shops and pseudo museums that had sprung up over the years. I’m positive I don’t remember them being there all those years ago.
Our next post - ”Naples and back to Rome”. Let’s hope there is a shiny new apartment key waiting for us when we get back.
And so the adventure continues……
** NB: I did mention in an early paragraph that “at the end of this blog I will tell you about some rubbish we spotted that will turn your stomach- just disgusting.”
Sorry, but you will have to read the next Blog to find out what it was.
Till next time from some where in Italy. Arrivederci !!
Liz and Tony
