After another day at sea we woke up once again in Italy. We got to see tons of sights and towns driving the coast line. We ported in Naples, and drove to Pompeii, Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. Pompeii was one of the destinations I was excited about seeing before we left. There is just something so cool about volcanoes that fascinates me. And to be able to see the remains of a city destroyed by one, even cooler. Right out of the port you can see Pompeii (the mountain not the town) and it is huge. They say before it erupted it was 12 times taller than the base that is left, so when you see the pictures imagine that. While most of us went on a private tour, Bill & Bopy went on a tour through the cruise line. They got to see the museum that houses all the things removed from Pompeii. Those pictures are amazing, but I don't have them yet. We had two small vans and we headed off. Our guide through Pompeii was so cool. She knew everything about everything and more. She is an archaeologist from Naples and loves telling people about Pompeii. She was especially cool about the babies. She would say, "Let them run, they can't hurt anything." And when Berk threw an empty coke bottle into a roped off area she laughed and said something about 'boys being boys' and walked past the ropes and got it. I liked her a lot.
The history you could see there was amazing. It was the place where you could see how advanced people really were there. For examples, you can tell the openings of a shop from a house because there was a trench in the stone left from a gate that would have been pulled across to close it. And one house we saw was so big, so so big. The biggest in Pompeii in fact, she told us it was over 29,000 square feet. Can you imagine? She guesses it would have taken 7 years to build. That home was so big, one room had the most amazing mosaic on the floor, and the room it was in was built solely to showoff that mosaic. The frescoes on the wall in the market were too cool. Above the stalls where vendors sold things were frescoes of what they offered. I got a photo of a baker and a poultry shop with frescoes of bread and a chicken. I could go on and on but this is one of those things you have to see for yourself. We saw them working on areas and asked if the excavation was near finishing, but she said there is a whole other area that hasn't even been started, they are leaving it for the next generation.
After about 3 hours (you need a week to see it all) we got to do some driving through the Italian shore. Naples is where pizza was originated so we had to have some pizza. We ate in Sorrento and had the yummiest pizza I have ever had. We then shopped a while before driving down the Amalfi Coast. It is the prettiest place in Italy. Just stunning. The lemons they grow there are famous, and they are HUGE. I swear in the shopping districts every other shop was dedicated to lemon liquors, lemon soaps, lemon candy- YOU NAME IT. We didn't get to try the limoncello, which is the liquor made from lemons but everyone raved about it.
Today was cool because we got to see a lot of towns and history but it wasn't super tiring. We headed back to the boat to get some sleep before we hit Rome the next day.
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