Italy 2010 - Day 6 - Pompeii
I don't get up at dawn much. I'm a night owl by nature, and wakign earlier than 7:30 a.m. is not on my list of favourite things to do, especially on holiday. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate a good sunrise, however, and the one over Positano as I headed up to the meeting spot was certainly nothing to sneeze at, all pinks and indigos against a sea as flat as glass, the fog rising along the cliffs. Ominously, it was already warm and sticky, but this time I had come prepared with my hat and two water bottles in my bag.
(By the way, computer bags, even backpacks, don't make good travel bags - too awkward to get into.)
D. seemed impressed I was there early - he knows me so well! - and before long our driver arrived to take us Positanoans to Amalfi, where the bus and our guide waited. More windy roads - this time I just closed my eyes from the outset, view unfortunately sacrificed to avoiding motion sickness.
We survived without ncident - or me ralphing - and climbed onto our bus; a proper full-size buss, unlike the little sawn-off local buses. Given how narrow those windy roads are, it was a feat of driving that got us clear of the cliffs - there were several times we had to stop and wait for cars to reverse out of the way, while moped riders swerved insanely between us, risking death by squishing without a second thought and making rude arm gestures if they actually had to stop.
Our guide for the day was Lorenzo, an older Italian man who had been a tour guide for 50 years. He had some odd little speech patterns, including a habit of saying "I am going to explain this to you," and then stopping, so we were left wondering if he was actually going to explain it after all (he would). he aso made sure to explain, many many times, that while the tour company wanted to pimp a particular reastaurant for lunch, he knew somewhere that was "much cheaper for you and has the light lunch". Apparently it was good I succumbed to another of my famous naps - he kept this up for most of the trip. We coped, however, long enough to get hooked up wth headphones linked to a mic on Lorenzo (who really wasn't good with technology and had a tendency to forget the mic was always on, either chatting away to other tour guides in Italian or whistling into it while walking) and trailled after our guide like a band of sweaty ducklings after a brightly-coloured-umbrella carrying papa duck.
On the face of it, Pompeii is a bunch of ruins, looking almost like a blasted moonscape or what's left over after a bushfire has swept through a town. Then you realise that what you're looking at are the remains of buildings 2000 years old, that the street you're walking down has ruts in the stones created by the wheels of chariots long gone. Temples, houses, markets... even a brothel remains, with paintings on the walls for the customers to pick their preferred option and set the prices. In a glass case by the market rest two plaster casts of victims of the eruption, skull and finger bones visible through the protective plaster coating. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine it as a bustling towen, with the noisy rattle of carriages on stone cobbles and the voices of venodrs hawking their wares.
The amphitheatre, remarkably intact (or perhaps restored), is still used for a yearly staging of Aida, an opera by Puccini. It seems appropriate.
The sun was merciless to us that da, temperatures reaching the mid-fourties (again, Celsius). Luckily for us the ancient water troughs had been retrofitted with modern plumbing, faucets for us to refill our bottles again and again. Still, we were all wilting by the time Lorenzo herded us back to the restaurant he recommended - he had a pretty good scam, really. The food wasn't bad, nor was it expensive, so we can't really hold it against the silly old duck.
After a brief stop at a cameo workshop (they carve them out of particular conch shells which have layers of colours), we were driven to the volcano responsible for Pompeii's preservation, Vesuvius. It had last erupted in 1944, so it was pretty safe. Except, perhaps, for highly unfit Aussie-Canadians with a habit of walking on their toes - the loose scoria gravel and the incline once again highlighted how badly I've let myself go over the past five years. Still, I made it, and the view was certainly worth it (albieit difficult to photograph). The humidity made it impossible to see Capri - a fog obscured the sea - but what was visible was gorgeous; you coudl see a distinct line of lush growth where the volcanic ash had nourished the woods. The air was heavy with the scent of the yellow broom shrubs that covered the volcano's slopes, with local honey for sale at the gift shop.
To be honest, I don't remember mjuch of the trip back - yes, I fell asleep again. You would have too, after climbing that thing! our car was waiting for us at Amalfi this timer, taking us and several others back to Positano. D and E had decided to have a date night, so I walked down to a local shop, got a prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella sandwich almost as big as my forearm, an apple and a large bottle of the local beer, and had dinner on my balcony under the stars, punctuated with the occaisional blast of fireworks from further up the cliff.