After the big wanderings around 'ancient' Rome the last couple of days we thought about doing a slightly less exhausting tour. So last night we booked a trip to Pompeii - our first organized tour. We also booked for a private tour of Vatican City for Friday but will tell more about that in later blogs.
The Pompeii tour started at 6.45am when we were picked up by a courier service. After joining the main tour group we bused down to Naples (about 3 hours south of Rome).
The trip was pleasant enough and our guide Ala was fascinating - fluently and seamlessly changing between 6 different languages.
Naples is a weird city, only 2million people (same as Perth) but the traffic is mayhem. Apparently Naples has the highest motor vehicle insurance premiums in Italy even though the traffic doesn't seem to get above 10kph. Motor bike premiums are even higher.
There were several humongous cruise ships in port - seriously these things are colossal and words can't describe just how big they really are.
Naples is also building an underground railway system but everywhere they start to dig they find ancient artifacts and hence everything slows up considerably whilst they work out the relative importance of each site. Naples is a city of contrast - some very old & majestic buildings overlooking an old and tired port and between the two are shanty towns made of cardboard boxes scrap wood etc.
After touring through Naples we headed to Pompeii which will be in the next blog.