The stones here speak …
Tuesday, September 24
One of the places we wanted to visit on this trip was Pompeii. Everyone knows the story, children make miniature volcanoes and tell scary stories, and we were fascinated by the exhibit that came to the Birmingham Museum of Art a few years ago. Having seen pieces of Pompeii in a museum setting, we were ready to check out their point of origin.
Jan recommended a trip to Naples by train, followed by a private tour to Positano, Sorrento and Pompeii. Worked out well, because wouldn’t have wanted to spend all day in the ruins, and none of us were ready to hike to the top of Vesuvius, one of our options. After getting to Termini, the main train station in central Rome, finding the train and our seats, we enjoyed the one-and-a-half-hour tripto Naples Centrale.
We were met at the station by our driver, who helped us out first by suggesting we didn’t really want to get coffee there — too expensive. Tony took us to a small bar in the station parking lot, frequented by locals, not by tourists. We needed his help! Then we were off on our Pompeii Day with a drive around the bay of Naples. This photograph shows us standing along the road across the bay, and the largish mountain in the background is Vesuvius.
The drive along the coast was exciting for many reasons: it was our first time to see this part of Italy, we drove past olive and apricot trees (not part of our normal lives), Tony’s comments were really good, and the scenery along the coast was nothing short of stunning. We all live hundreds of miles from the Alabama coast, and when we do travel to the beaches of Alabama and the Florida panhandle, this is not what we see there!
We continued around the coast, over mountains and along really narrow roads, meeting buses and being passed by motorcycles, until we reached Positano. The town itself is one of the most picturesque places I’ve ever seen, and if I hadn’t been so gob-smacked sitting in the front seat, I might have taken a photograph or two. As it was, I just managed to keep my mouth closed most of the time. We parked in a garage perhaps halfway up the mountainside from the waterside, then proceeded to walk down the narrow lanes (no traffic allowed much of the way) to the beach.
Judy stayed in the shops nearer the garage, and I went only far enough to take a photograph of the others moving back toward me after dipping a finger in the water. Be assured they had a good time, even though they look like the Birmingham Mafia on a mission.
After a little bit of time ducking into various places, including a church, we made it back up the hill and took off for Sorrento. Altogether, this was another fun drive, and it ended in Sorrento just in time for lunch. That’s never bad timing. We had a little time to look around and shop, then it was back in the car and off to the main event of our day: the ruins of Pompeii.
This is the first view we had of the ruins after we met our guide for the visit. That shadowy shape you see at the base of the second tree from the right is Vesuvius. I was staggered to realize that even at that great distance, Pompeii and Herculaneum were buried under thirty feet of ash and debris from the eruption. Miles away, yet another eruption of that magnitude would bury Pompeii all over again.
I have to treat this part of my journal like I did the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica. There’s just too much to see, and we all made too many photographs to try to crowd small-size pictures on this page. The page of photographs from Pompeii has shots of large public spaces, of ruins of houses both small and large, and of some of the surviving architectural and decorative detail. There are a couple of other tabs with photos from the rest of the day. As before, it’s your choice to take a look or continue reading my wandering words of wisdom.
Our train trip back to Termini in Rome was again very pleasant, this time in a first class coach, thanks to Jan Cordell. After a long day like this one, it was appreciated. We managed to find our way through the Metro system to the Spanish Steps to get to our hotel, but we didn’t try for a large meal together. KC and Mark found a Chinese restaurant, not a surprise to us, the rest of us just snacked, and we were all satisfied. We went to sleep dreaming of sheep, because the next day was our trip to Orvieto, with excursions both to a farm where they made cheese and to an olive oil business, where we expected a bit of education and an olive oil tasting. As it turned out, the day held even more tasty surprises.