Thursday April 15, 2010

After a short walk to the train station we were headed to see the beautiful ruins of Pompei. The train ride was really a good deal about $7 round trip for the 2 of us. We got off the train and followed everyone to the spot where we could purchase our tickets. We were approached by several people selling a tour in English and finally decided on a old man named Jesseppe. We were hooked up with Kari, and Nick from London. Jesseppe was just the best, at 81 years old had been the president of the tour guides for 25 years and now only does 1 tour a day. As we snaked our way around the ruins it was hard to imagine what it must have been like in those days but with the information Jesseppe was giving us we could almost picture what it was like. He took us to the stores, wine stores, brothels, big villas, and small villas. Bob the engineer was very interested especially in the road ways, he was always trying to figure out the curb and gutter and the one way streets. Jesseppe had a way to dive right in front of hords of people smiling and yelling, we manged to always be ahead of the other large groups. We could have spent more time but the weather was getting more miserable as we proceeded. We said goodbye to Kari, and Nick and boarded our train to head back to our hotel.

We dined at a restaraunt located at the bottom of the hill close to Marine Grand called De Marie. The walk down was a bit challenging as we didn't take the correct road and ended up in the camp grounds, with some direction we hiked down tons of stairs and found the place. The service was not good but the food was very enjoyable.