According to weather.com, sunrise in Pompei is around 6:15 AM. According to the roosters, it’s around 4:30 AM. So we had an early start to the day. It’s surprising since we are in an urban setting that so many people have roosters.
We had breakfast here at the Certe Notte B & B. According to reports on TripAdvisor, the breakfast here is sumptuous. Really, not so much. There’s the usual croissants and coffee and tea. There is some ham from a packet and some cheese but I was expecting a real spread. Doesn’t really matter, it’s just that you can’t always trust everything you read on TripAdvisor. One man’s feast is another’s typical breakfast.
So Antonio, our host, gave us instructions for walking to the excavations at Pompeii. RANT ALERT!!!! We get to the kiosk to buy the tickets and we are met by a woman who hates her job. We ask if there is an audio guide. She says no. We ask if we can get a map and she pushes one at us. This is a free map that is supposed to be given out when you buy your ticket. So we walk around sort of aimlessly for an hour, when we espy someone with an audio tour guide. What? There is no audio guide. Oh no, there is just no audio guide at the particular entry point that we went through.
She couldn’t have told us where to get them? So we tramp all the way to the other end of the excavations to get the audio tour. Unfortunately we are already a little tired from the first hour. The ground is very uneven and up and down hill. But we get the guide and then do the 2 hour tour. By the end, we are really tired. Then we have to take the guides back and then we have to find our way back from this new entry point. It is a very long walk.
Pompei looks like it was a thriving place. They had just had an earthquake in 62 AD that they were rebuilding from when they were hit with the eruption in 79 AD. There are plaster casts of victims and a whole town caught at the moment when the hot ash covered them. Even though it happened a long time ago, it’s rather poignant.
We stopped for lunch on the way back during the long walk. We had fried calamari which was some of the best ever – whole tiny squid battered and fried. We also shared a Caprese salad, regular salads and a sausage pizza. This pizza was the real deal. It had perfect crust and perfect sausage and was just so yummy. It reminded me of the pizza we had growing up on the Jersey shore.
We don’t go out to dinner because this area is pretty sketchy. We also don’t go out for dinner because we are 1) too tired and 2) too full from lunch.