Maiori via Pompeii

Experience 30 The city under the ashes. Pompeii. 19 June.

Leaving Spoleto, we headed south and west heading for Naples and the Amalffi coast. With any luck we will get a bit of relief from the heat as we move away from the centre of the country. On the way we are going to stop at Pompeii for a guided tour.

Arriving at Pompeii and it seemed that a few other people had the same idea as us. There were bus loads and this isn't the peak of the season either! Our guide said that in an 8 month period 4 million people visited Pompeii each year. Now Maths has never been my strong point but by rough calculation I figured that was about 500,000 a month, 125,000 a week and therefore 16,000 a day. Well by my reckoning we all turned up at the same time today!

It was still fascinating...though you did have to wait a bit to see the main attractions. Thankfully we had a lively guide who kept us entertained at points where we had to wait. It was still really hot and our guide carried a white umbrella, this served two purposes, one it kept our guide in the shade and two we could follow his umbrella In the crowd. Now the point he didn't mention was that all the guides carried white umbrellas so the second part of this didn't work all that well....but we managed just the same.

The ruins themselves, what can you say? The roman baths, the gladiator training area, the amphitheater, the brothel, the rutted roads, the piazza, the casts made from buried remains....eerie in their detail, all in the shadow of Mt Vesuvius.

I could have stayed a lot longer, but as with most of this tour it felt like we had been given a taste and off we went again.

Experience 31 Bus ride on the Amalffi coast. 19 June.

Well it's not the coast as we know it at home but it was certainly impressive when we got our first glimpse of the Amalfi Coast. The views with the meditteranean sea on our left and the steep rugged terrain on our right was not the only breathtaking experience we were about to encounter. We travelled about 40k's of the coastline which consisted of over 350 bends, apparently there are over 900 bends on the entire Amalfi coast. In a 12 meter long coach on narrow winding roads with a long sheer drop to the sea on our left and many many oncoming vehicles this experience was truly breathtaking. Thankfully not too many coaches are allowed on this road and nobody drives a four wheel drive in Italy because at times there was only millimeters between our coach and the oncoming vehicle. One driver in a very small car still tried to go between us and the barrier wall nearly wedging themselves in and getting completely stuck. As you can imagine this undoubtedly created a bit of a traffic holdup and a long line of traffic in both directions. We also encountered a couple of tight hairpin bends through little villages with stuccoed buildings on both sides, the corners of which had been previously shaved off by passing buses and trucks no doubt. None of this was too tricky for our awesome bus driver, Marucio. As we rounded our last bend to our destination of Maiori a cheer of "Bravi, Bravi, Bravi" was raised and a round of applause for Marucio, our driver.