Europe Trip: Day 33, June 22nd

I woke up at around 9am and headed down to have some breakfast (2 euros; $3). It was only some croissants, but I ate them up and stuffed two more in my pocket for later.

The train that goes from Napoli to Portici continues on towards Mount Vesuvius, circling around it -- hence being called the Circumvesuvia. I bought a day ticket for it and headed to Pompeii Scavi (Pompeii Ruins).

I decided to join a guided tour, because without some sort of reference there is no way to know what is important and what is not, or even to know what is what. Our guide was an older Italian guy who usually gives private tours in 6 different languages. He was entertaining, and of course especially enjoyed showing the brothel. The level of preservation in the city is amazing, even frescoes/paintings on the wall still exist in their original form, which in the case of the brothel meant pictures showing the 'specialty' of the woman inhabiting the room.

The tour guide also showed us the bath house, the villa of Crassius, a big pagan temple, a bakery, and much more. Once the hour and a half long tour was over he told us that there was an ampitheater (small version of the Coliseum) about a kilometer away. So about half of the group ended up heading there, myself included.

After wandering around the city for a while by myself I decided it was time to head back to the hostel and pack up. Raphaele had said that he would tell Agnese that I would stay at the hostel until 5-5:30pm, so I waited a while after I checked out, but at 5:20pm I decided I better leave if I wanted to get back to Rome at a decent hour.

I paid 20 euros instead of 10 euros in order to get there an hour earlier. It was by that time easy for me to take the metro, bus, and then walk 5-10 minutes to their apartment. I arrived around 9:15pm, and surprisingly both Francesca and Lubna were home. Lubna had said before that she was working at the voting place (there was a referendum in Rome), but apparently not that many people voted and she got done early. Also it was her birthday, but she didn't want to make that big of a deal about it. And Francesca had stayed home that day because she had a bad headache, so she had slept most of the day.

We ate some pasta, and then when I told them I had never really listened to Italian music they decided they had to show me some. So for a good two to three hours we went around on YouTube watching (and they translated) different Italian hit songs -- much of which was from the 80's.