We Love Ruins

The big plan for today was to find our way to the ancient city of Pompeii. We had to deal with train a lot in Russia which wasn't too easy, but the train experience in Western Europe looked promising. We booked our two way tickets from Roma Termini to Napoli Centrale (Naples) on Trenitalia.com before our trip for 69e per person (I believe there was a discount for booking the return trip on the same day) and Drake was free since he was under 4.

When we arrived at Roma Termini early morning, the departure platforms were posted on large screens about 20 minutes before departure. We found easier to look for the platform using the train number since not always your destination would be listed only the final destination was. In addition, there were often multiple trains (rapid vs regular train) going to the same destination.

We booked the rapid Frecciarossa train with assigned seats. It was on time and pretty easy to find our assigned carriage and seats. There was no one to check us in by the train, the tickets would be checked on board.  With online purchases it was important to know the booking reference.

Train at Roma Termini

It took about just over 1 hour to reach Napoli Centrale. Now came to the task of finding the train to get us to Pompeii. We did some research last night, there was a commuter train called "circumvesuviana railway" just downstairs from the main floor of the Napoli Centrale station. The ticket was 2.90e per person. Once we made our way to the platform, it was a bit hard to determine which train we were suppose to get on. We almost got on the wrong train and had to panic to get off before the doors shut. Good thing there were plenty of tourists around who knew what they were doing.

           Circumvesuviana Railway Platform

After a 30 minutes ride and 12, 15 or so stops later, we got off at the "Pomei Scavi Villa dei Misteri" station with hoards of other tourists. The gate to Pompeii was just a 2 minute walk from the station. The ticket was 11e per person.  We didn't get a tour guide and just took our time with Drake stroll the grounds on our own.  We grabbed a guide book and map which helped us picked out what we were interested in seeing.  Pompeii as many know is a city engulfed by a volcano eruption and frozen in time.  This archaeological treasure was a massive area full of mansions, shops, bath houses and even a whore house.

                                 bath house                                     corpse

             Whore house rated R mural    Really old toilet in the whore house

Most of the streets in Pompeii were somewhat stroller friendly however after a few hours it felt like our Kelty stroller was taking quite a beating.

We thought once we entered Pompeii there would be no water or food available, but inside and close to the main square there was a cafe with food and beverage for sale.  Of course it was full of terribly overpriced and mediocre food complete with subpar slow service.  Around two o'clock, we were done and ready to head back.  We hoped on the commuter train back to Napoli Centrale.

Since we booked a 6PM train backed to Roma Termini (thinking we needed all day in Pompeii), we had a few hours to kill in Naples.  Naples was famous for their yummy pizzas, so we set out to find some.  But we couldn't go very far from the train station and not much was open at 4PM.  To my surprise we passed by a Chinese restaurant.  I really wanted to go there instead of pizza.  It was only day 3 in Italy, I already missed the taste of home.  But we were in Italy!  We ended up settling for the first pizza place that was open.  It was ok at best.  Train station pizza not recommended.

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Location:Pompeii