Fri. 09-21-07 -- Sorrento, Pompeii, and Herculaneum, Italy
Note to self, don't try cleaning earplugs off with water! I washed my plugs last night, and then they'd expand instantly which made them impossible to put in my ears! But fortunately we had another set because I really needed them last night!
This morning we got up early and took the commuter train to Pompeii. We entered the ruins right around opening time, so we had some time there before it got really crowded with tour groups! It was incredible how large the Pompeii ruins were! We had mostly free reign of the ancient city blocks, so we explored with our map and our audioguides. There were two theaters, a colosseum and tons of shops and houses. The forum was a cool place because it was pretty open and had lots of administration buildings and temples surrounding it. In one of the buildings were casts of human remains left by the volcanic ash that buried the city. The skulls were still in place, so the casts actually had teeth, which looked pretty creepy.
We explored the ancient city for about 3.5 hours, then we went back to the train station and caught the train to Herculaneum. This city was much smaller, but built more vertically and better preserved. We probably spent another 1.5 hours here walking through the 2000 year old streets and houses.
We weren't able to go to Vesuvius because there is only one bus that leaves from Herculaneum each day. We gave up on the mountain, and hope to be able to see it sometime in the next 2 days. With the two ancient cities thoroughly explored, we headed back to Sorrento where we hung out in our room for a few hours. We're pretty fatigued from being on the run every single day, so we've been spending more and more time each day just relaxing in our room...
When evening rolled around, we walked around the town and sat at a cliff-side bench to watch the sun set behind the cliffs. Then we walked around the streets a bit before returning to the same restaurant as last night for some yummy dinner. After dinner, we sauntered back to our hotel and hung out before going to bed.
