Day 4 – Best Made Plans
October 18 -- Naples, Italy
Today was a DAY. Woke up while the sky was still dark as we pulled into Naples. Got a quick breakfast before heading out and off the ship without Ryan and Carole. We were late. Even with my added buffer time, we missed the bus. So now we were flying blind. I had no idea how to get to the train station Porta Nolana and so we went to the cabs. They wouldn’t take us because the journey was too short, but it was too far for us to walk to make our Herculaneum time slot on time. No problem, we would take the metro. We’re familiar with that.
We arrived at the train station in only 5 minutes… And it was connected to the metro. Why was I trying to take the bus when this was so easy? We walked easily from the metro to the station and went through the gate.
Huh. As I looked around at the signage, I realized why I wanted to take the bus… because the metro took us to the wrong station. I wanted the smaller Porta Nolana because it only has two platforms…A lot easier to navigate. But we had gone to the larger Centrale. Because I read about other tourists complaining of inadequate signage. Man, we’re they right. There weren’t platform numbers. The screens telling you which trains were arriving or leaving had the blue screen of death. Not a single train was marked. The board showing what trains go to what platforms was clear down the hall and up the stairs.
The only thing that was there, was a lone, handwritten sign that said Pompeii Savi ->. I knew that Herculaneum was on the way to Pompeii, so I knew that this was the right train to get on… I knew it was the tourist train. And then as we went down the stairs and looked upon several other people who look just as lost as we were, I knew everyone else was led here. I also knew it came every 15 minutes, so we would be fine.
Until, it didn't.
20 minutes past. 30 minutes… Where was this train? I knew that it’s often delayed, but this seemed a little much, even for Italy.
So I googled to see if there were any delays and was met with an AI page, “All tourist, trains in Naples have been indefinitely canceled starting October 1.”
It was now October 18th. Great. Now what? We had missed both regular commuter trains and our entry time for Herculaneum was fast approaching. So now what?
Eek. Taxi was the best bet. It would cost a fortune and I was most upset about it, but we had a time crunch and another stop after Herculaneum. So we went up to the main floor easily found where the cabs hung out. Haha, we had three drivers try to talk us out of it. So, I knew what was going to suck. But it was okay.
The traffic was absolutely horrible. Stop and go and the cars came so close to each other. It’s a miracle that they didn’t hit each other. They didn’t care for bikes, they didn’t care for scooters, they didn’t care for pedestrians or even large buses… I don’t know how I didn’t see a single accident. But once we got out to the countryside, it was smooth sailing on the highway. We arrive, thank the driver and entered Herculaneum.
I originally wrote this with the assumption that everyone knew what Herculaneum was
but that’s a silly assumption to make.
So, once upon a time, a little mountain named Vesuvius erupted. It rained ash, rock and debris onto the city, before enveloping it in a super-heated air that killed/carbonized everything.
Sound familiar? Probably because you’ve heard this story with the city of Pompeii. Herculaneum is an ocean-front city nearby. If Pompeii was Colorado Springs, Herculaneum would have been Vail. Very wealthy, very neat.
Anyhoo, I had researched this place for several years (obviously) and me and Elijah recently watched the show put on by Tom Hiddleson. So it was super surreal to go through the city that we were already familiar with. We wandered into huge houses, up the streets taking everything in. Again, this place was destroyed in 79 AD almost 2,000 years ago. The place was magnificently or preserved. There were fresco that were still intact. You can still see painted art, statues remained, the stores artifex beds pots…. Found houses that still had full mosaics, houses where the archaeologist had preserved the wood in glass. The whole thing was just insane.
We finally made our way to the boat house. The show that Tom Hiddleson did, he humanized everybody…naturally, and gave the known victims a backstory…very interesting, go watch it. Anyway, we followed the characters of the show to their final place…the boathouse.
It was actually really sobering. It was just piles of old bones huddled together, some with grotesque expressions, others clinging to one another… really small ones. Obviously, I didn’t take any pictures…the whole thing was just heavy.
Afterward, we decided to just head out early toward Pompeii. The walk back was straight up a hill. We stopped along the way into a random store, got some pizza that was cut… with scissors…. then got to the train station. This one would be easier to navigate since there was only one way to go. However, which direction? Again, nothing is labeled. We knew what platform there was platform 1 platform 2 but there was no indication of which direction was which station. So we did it the old fashioned way. I opened my Google maps to see which direction we were facing and aimed it toward Pompeii Scavi. That was the direction we needed to go. Perfect.
The train was absolutely full. But it was fine, we weren’t going too far. After only 15 minutes we made it to Pompeii Scavi. We followed the road down and handed in our tickets. She beeped them, then looked confused. Apparently, when I clicked for the 18th, my thumb accidentally hit the 11th so I got the wrong date. So we had to go wait in the long line to talk to them. Apparently they use a different reseller to sell their tickets. So, they had no control over it either. I’d have to call the reseller later. It was fine. We finally got in, and walk through the streets of Pompeii.
Now. Pompeii is definitely a bigger archaeological site.
Kinda. We actually don’t know the size of Herculaneum since most of it is under the living city.
There are shops. There are homes. It was a hustling, bustling city, full of regular people. So for most of the houses, the artwork, and frescos, and mosaics were a lot less…impressive in Pompeii than they were in Herculaneum. Still, I really appreciated the site. The archaeologists had labeled each street with a name, and then each building with a number. Now every house hand an address. Made things a lot easier to find.
Which, Elijah and I had to continue our search for places we had seen in the show. But…we had no idea which street/house it was based off of. After a few minutes of research, we got the address, then had to find it.
Yeah…we had to use Google maps, which showed us a path down the streets (good job, archaeologists!) about 15 minutes away. Yeah. That’s how big the site was. So we wandered the town, casually going into buildings that interested us on the way headed toward the building we wanted to see.
It was nice to see how the normal people lived. I think we romanticize everything in the Roman times, but that’s just because we often only see the wealthy part… The homes, the temples, the Colosseum… There’s not much left of how the peasants and regular middle class citizens lived. Pompeii was just that.
We learned that our building would be closed (Google told us so) so when we got there, we had to look through the gates and the closed doors to just catch a glimpse.
After that, we wandered into the building with the victims of Pompeii. What the archaeologists had done was find a human-shaped crevice in the rock, filled it with plaster, and then excavated said rock. What they were left with was a cast… A detailed layout of how the person was when they died. Again… Very sobering.
There were people, men, women, children… Everybody just living their lives. It was crazy to imagine how they felt. Got to remember that they had no idea that Vesuvius was a volcano. It’s argued that they have never even seen a volcano eruption before and would have no idea what was even happening. I couldn’t imagine the fear. And then when the pyroclastic flow came through all over. It was a very humanistic side to a very terrible tragedy.
Our feet were done, need to go.
We decided to do a last minute archaeological run to see the veiled Christ back in town. We were early, so we stopped at at a small Cafe. Got a random treat (still don’t know what it was) and some coffee… Nate said it was the best he’d ever had. Then, we headed to the train station.
We walked up the path prepared to do what we had done before and use Google maps to find out which direction we were going but look! Lo and behold! There was a sign! And it worked! We knew exactly where to go and how to get there! The train arrived right when the sign said it would. Turns out that this is operated by the The Country of Italy, versus the city of Naples. So, it was a lot better run. We got a nice comfy seats, no crowds and the sign on the train digital showed us exactly what stop we were at and how long it would take to get to the next. Compared to the regular commuter trains, this was a dream.
On the way I decided to book the tickets for the museum, ’cause I was done waiting in lines. But… They were sold out for the next week and a half.
Oh well. We had enough walking for the day anyway… My watch said 21,000 steps.
So we got off a stop early and headed back to the ship. Gelato. Gelato first. So we ate gelato while waiting for Ryan and Carol to return. Carol was absolutely done, so we met Ryan and went out to the Irish pub where they had live music. A guy on a guitar playing classic hits. We hung out there until it was time for dinner, and went to pick up the grandma. After that, it was time to end the night in the hot tub.. A great day!
