Pompeii

Today was our trip to Pompeii. We crammed into the metro again but the ride was a bit shorter. We got off at the main station and easily caught our comfortable train to Naples. It’s quite nice because every time we get in the train they give us a bottle of water, a bag of chips and some chocolate cookies!  Perfect to put in our bag for a little ride us over snack! This ride was a little over an hour. 

296 km/ hour

After that we found the little local line that goes to Pompei town. This is a little train that’s more like a bus or subway. We had read that it’s crazy busy and the locals hockey for positions to get a seat. So we had warned the kids that we may have to stand for the 30 minute ride. But this is the joy of travelling in low season!  Lots of available seats!

I was talking to the guy beside me while waiting for the train who was British. He commented on how yesterday he was thankful it wasn’t July when the temperatures were 30 degrees. Then he said, Oh sorry,  that’s Centigrade. And I said, we are Canadian so we use the same system. And he said, Oh gosh I assumed you were American. I’m so sorry. What an insult. You should really wear some sort of sign that seats I am not American and I do not want to be. 😂 Then he went on to tell me about how he thinks that it’s the biggest insult to Canadians 

We got to Pompeii and started the Rick Steves tour. The kids were annoyed. They just wanted to run around and get impatient with us trying to navigate to follow the path. But we would just be wandering aimlessly without it so we kept following the RS path. Really wild to think that all of these ruins were 2000 years old. Again, Owen would like to live back in these times!

We picked up some lunch outside of the Pompeii site and just ate it quickly while we were looking at ruins. 

Worn parts in the stone from chariots

Takeout restaurant counter. There would be pots of food in the holes. 

Oven at a bakery

Theatre

Always restoring

Then we headed back to the train station for the 2 hour, 2 train journey back to Rome!

Eating some more of our lunch

Owen trying to lure a pigeon with a picture of chips in his phone 😂 

Trevor 2008 vs Joel 2025

When we got back to Rome at 4:20pm we Metroid back to our hotel for a rest.   But we didn’t rest too long!  The next 3 days they were calling for rain, rain and more resin. And so we decided to switch a couple of our evenings around so that we could do our big evening of exploring Rome tonight while it was not raining!

By the way, no matter where you are in the world, if you have two teenage brothers, they will constantly bug each other! 😂 

Some random things I’ve noticed:

- I have seen about 10 people wearing neck warmers this week and in all cases the temperature was no less than 10C. We are all in tshirts and we walked by a guy an hour ago in a puffy coat and a neck warmers and it was sunny and 17C!  The guy across from me on the train right now is searing a long sleeved turtle neck sweater with another long sleeve underneath and he has a wool jacket beaide him!

- there is a lot more smoking and people have their cigarettes in these little electronic holders. Trev said they stop the cigarette from burning unless you actually take a puff. So they don’t just smoke when they are in someone’s hand. They are everywhere!

- The kids have noticed there are exactly 3 kinds of pop: coke, Fanta and sprite. Sometimes you can find lemon soda. But that’s it. Compare that to our millions of flavours!

- the family keeps laughing at me because I keep saying gracius (Spanish) instead of grazie (Italian). Or even more commonly some mix of the two as I realize my mistake before the word is over! 😂