10-24 Naples, Italy

Naples is the principle town of the region of Campania (southern Italy countryside) and lies on the north side of the Bay of Naples – one of the most beautiful bays in the world.  The backdrop to this city is Mount Vesuvius – a still active volcano.  Naples has a population of 1,700,000.  It is also one of the most Catholic cities in the world with 448 historical churches!  It is also said that Naples likely invented pizza.

We did not tour Naples itself.  Our tour included the beach resort area of Sorrento and then the ruins of Pompeii.  The one hour drive to Sorrento was magnificent – if not also a bit scary along the very narrow roads with crazy Italian drivers – many on Vespas.  This picture shows part of the coastline.

Sorrento is a peninsula jutting out into the sea, only three miles from the island of Capri.  It has a population of only 25,000.  Along the way, we went through three tunnels to get there, one being two miles long.  We saw lots of olive trees with nets underneath them to catch the olives when they harvest them next month by shaking the branches. 

The first thing we did upon arriving in Sorrento was to visit Cuomo’s Lucky Store.  It makes in-laid wood products.  We had a short demonstration.  Their goods were beautiful, and we considered a game table, but in the end, as beautiful as it was, it was a bit pricey! 

We then had free time to wander the streets nearby.  It was pleasant enough with little shops along the street.  Since it was Sunday, many young families were out walking with their children.  We even saw a baby buggy with the most adorable triplets (girls all in pink!) 

We then had a lunch at a wonderful restaurant called  O’ Parrucchiano.  We walked through a pathway lined with lemon trees, and then went underneath a canopy of grapes to enter the restaurant.  It was all glassed in with green all around.  We had Sorrento wine with our meal of cannelloni, followed by fish (orange roughy) and dessert was a lemon light cake (really good!) 

The best of the day was yet to come.  We boarded our bus to go to Pompeii.  We learned that Mt. Vesuvius is 4,000 feet high, and at the crater is 1/2 mile wide and 600 feet deep.  It currently has a temperature of 300 degrees, but when it gets to 1,000 degrees, it explodes.  The last eruption was in 1944. 

Pompeii had been a very wealthy and advanced city before the 79 AD eruption that destroyed the city and buried it in ash and lava.  Actually, it was the toxic gases that mainly killed the people before they had time to escape.

The ruins spread out over 60 acres, so our guide took us to the highlights.  He had done some excavating there back in 1959, and has been a tour guide for many years, so he (Roberto) knew it well.  We were fortunate.  I was absolutely taken with all of it, but I will do my best to summarize it here.  After studying it in school and seeing a few pictures, it was fascinating to actually see it in person.

Everywhere we walked, we did it on the original stone road.  In the cracks, the Pompeiians had placed little bits of white marble to reflect the light so they could see when it got dark.  They also had larger rocks placed in the middle of the street so that people could cross over the road when it was wet.

We saw what was left of the Temple of Apollo, and the stone alter they made sacrifices on.  We went to what had been the center of the town – a huge open forum that would have had marble flooring. We passed by a protected collection of relics found after excavation.  The most interesting were the three people they had in the positions they were in when they died. This is a pregnant woman who is lying down trying to protect her unborn child. In this collection was a chest that had contained lots of silver coins.  Through all these relics, much was learned about this city and its people.

We saw what had been little shops, some with a separate area behind it for gambling.  Dice were found in these areas that are exactly like the ones we use today. 

Homes were much larger, and we saw several that were in fairly good condition – including fresco paintings still on the walls. 

We saw several bakeries with large ovens that could bake up to 80 loaves of bread.  Also, there were heavy, stone coned shaped mills where the grain was put and then ground by a slave or donkey.  When excavated, more than 25 loaves of petrified bread were found in one of the large ovens! 

One of the more interesting ruins was the brothel.  Many sailors came to Pompeii but could not speak the language.  So, way up high on the wall, there was a phallic symbol so that everyone would know how to find this spot.  In addition, there were pictures of various sexual activities so that the sailors could just point to what they wanted. 

I purchased a book so that I could have a good reference for all we saw (and didn’t have time to see!) We saw even more than I described above, and I could spend pages going into detail about all we did get to see.  Seeing pictures explains it all so much better, and we took a bunch.

Also we were so thirsty after all that walking around the ruins, we bought a lemonade that was like a slushy and tasted soooo good!  Guess this is the result of being in the heart of citrus trees!

Before we left Pompeii, we stopped briefly at a cameo store (Donadio) right off the main street entrance to the ruins.  There was a short movie clip to show how cameos were made – which was quite interesting – and very tedious work.  We then had the opportunity to buy some, of course!

Back on the ship, we enjoyed the sail away from our balcony.  We had a much better view of the outline of the Island of Capri. It was so pleasant, we stayed long enough to watch a pretty sunset as well.  Had dinner in the Lido and on our way out met a really nice couple from Palm Beach, FL who had been on the first segment of our world cruise this past year so we had lots to chat about.  Then went to see the magician, Woody Pitman.  He was so bad, we left in the middle of his show.  Ted, you should consider cruise ships – you could really WOW them with what YOU do.  This guy was doing stuff you did when you first started out.