Pompeii - Excavations and Pizzas

I have to admit I am loving the smaller cities and towns a lot more than the big tourist cities. Of course you have to go there but the charm of the smaller places is so much nicer and driving through the country definitely allows you this luxury.

Our lovely driving adventures continued without a GPS in the south. Trust me after this trip we are brilliant at figuring things out. We had no idea how to get to the archeological site of Pompeii and probably drove around the city at least twice. And asking people didn't help too much since there are multiple entrances and we got different directions each time.

Finally giving up around our third attempt we saw a cafe and pulled over for some much needed coffee. And guess what we see in front of us - a big walled site. One look and we both burst out laughing. Just our luck we parked right next to one of the entrances by accident and we were staring right at it.

Now when we heard ruins we just thought ok some building broken down during the volcanic eruption. Clearly we hadn't done our research and had no idea it was 44 hectares of excavations! Literally an entire city burred in 25km of plume from the volcano back on 24 August AD 79.

It's completely bewildering when you grasp the vastness of this site and begin to realise the tragedy that occurred way back then, which hits you specifically when you see the huddled bodies in the garden of the fugitives. As you walk through you see a full community and how their lives were. Not only are there broken houses but there's a stadium or amphitheater where the locals and politicians enjoyed the gladiator games (though these sports were without animals, which came much later in Rome), a local gymnasiums and pool, a spa with cold and thermal rooms like our saunas these days, a massive piazza with sections for the senate, for worship and for markets.

And a big laundromat which used... you won't believe it... the urine of the towns folk to clean the clothes to utilize its strong contents.

Of course the lustful nature of man was very prevalent even back then and we saw the red light district of a town more from the 1st century. Crazy small chambers with frescos of various positions all along the top. Also indications along the road for where to find the district, it's right there, how horny the male species was since for ever.

Restaurants, roads built with footpaths and crossing keeping the exact distance of the chariots at the time. Even then our human race was pretty damn smart and advanced.

You must take a guide, wait for them if you have to. We weren't sure cause you need a group of at least 8 to make it affordable and just our luck there were only non-English speakers coming through that day. We walked 10m and realised we won't even know what we're looking at and would most definitely get lost yet again and so we waited and finally ended up paying about €13 each as we were just 7, but it was so worth it. The detail you get from a good guide just makes you look at each block of stone in a completely different way. The whole site comes alive in your head and you imagine how our ancestors lived millennia ago.

Completely overwhelmed we had to make our way into the heart of Napoli. Not the best idea but we were brave. With some brilliant directions from our most helpful guide we made our way into a Naples (oh also the people of the south sooo much friendlier, I mean all Italians in general are super helpful and smily and chatty even if they don't speak a word if English but in the south even more so). We got off track for sure and with some brilliant acting like 'dumb blonds' we managed to make a completely illegal turn thanks to the cops stopping traffic for us and 15 mins later we made our way successfully to the Europcar drop off near the port of Naples on Via Saint Lucia.

And now in the city of the delicious pizzas we prepared ourselves for some yumminess. And who am I to refute every tourist and gourmet. Naples has the best pizzas. You knew that too. We didn't make it to the famed Michele's in Eat Pray Love partly cause we didn't wanna get into a cab and partly cause it's unfair to all the others who, rightly as we discovered, had amazing pizza as well just like Muranos on via Saint Lucia.

Not really having much energy left to explore the rest of Naples on foot thanks to the scorching heat in Pompeii, we got on a train heading back to our hotel ready for a dip in the ocean.