Yesterday we took the 12:00 midday ferry from Dubrovnik to Bari, Italy. We had booked a cabin, however when we arrived at the ferry terminal, they informed us that our ticket did not include the car. We had to get the car to Italy, so we had to pay an extra 90 euro in cash to book the car on the ferry.

This left us with very little money left because we had purposefully spent all of our Croatian Kuna so that we wouldn't have to exchange any.

Anyway, there was nothing we could do, so we spent the next 7.5 hours sailing over the Adriatic to Italy.

When we arrived, it was another 3 hour drive to Pompeii. As we drove down the motorway, the sun was setting directly in front of us, hanging in the sky like an iridescent plum. It was surreal.

We stopped at 3 service stations trying to find an ATM machine, because we only had 20 euro left and were concerned about the toll booths. If they did not accept credit cards we would be in trouble. Would you believe, no service stations had an ATM. All of them told us to go to a bank. At 9:30 at night? It all worked out fine in the end, since the toll booth accepted our Visa card.

We arrived in Pompeii, and after checking in, parking the car, etc, we got to bed at about 11:30.

The next morning, after breakfast, we went straight to the Pompeii ruins. It was great to see it after 15 years and see all the additional excavation that has occurred. It is truly huge now, much bigger than last time we came.

It was great to be there early, since we beat the tour groups by about half an hour. Soon there were tour groups all over the place though. It was very hot walking around the stone streets, but we really enjoyed it.

There is not a lot to do in Pompeii other than the ruins, so after leaving at lunch time, we had nothing much to do except eat and drink for the rest of the day. Lunch, ice cream, prosecco and dinner filled the rest of the day, as well as a trip to buy crap at the souvenir stalls and a stop at the supermarket to buy fruit for our journey the next day. Lunch was really ordinary, a tourist restaurant recommended by our concierge. The food was typical of Italian tourist restaurants: feed them anything, they are only tourists. The gnocci I ordered were not home-made and you could tell. The bread was also a day old, I reckon.

Fortunately, our concierge's recommendation for dinner worked out much better. La Bettola del Gusto was excellent. Eggplant parmigiana for entrée, then Lidia had arancini and I had pork medallions in a sundried tomato and pistachio sauce with salad and grilled vegetables on the side. Loving the veges in Croatia and Italy!

All in all, Pompeii was a reasonable stopover on the way to our last stop tomorrow: Rome!