The last day of our esteemed Megatrip.

So there we were. Pompeii. Land of 1000 ruins.

Our plan? Complete and utter nothingness.

We ran in guns holstered, waking up as early as we thought we needed to with no idea of what all there was to see.

As we’re debating where our breakfast is going to take us, we wander out into the hallway, a stone’s sneeze from the front desk. The lady drops a few eaves on us, and informs us that breakfast is provided.

Score one bad planning.

We have a great breakfast (even greater due its freeness) and are already ready already to get on with the ruins.

Now…where did we put those ruins?

As we’re walking out past the door with our bags, the lady drops a few more eaves on us. (At this point, we’re pretty much buried under eaves. [By the way, what the heck are eaves? Isn't that part of a roof? Who drops that on someone?])

She happily informs us (as we happily listen) that we can (happily) leave our luggage right there for the day. (This makes us all…happy. And, in retrospect, carrying our our junk all day = no bueno.)

Then, she happily informs us of the location of said ruins. (Also, there’s a church positioned happily along the way. How convenient.)

Score two bad planning.

We stroll out of the hostel, quite happily, and stop at the train station to get our tickets ahead of time. We maneuver the line and navigate the Departures board, ending up with the tickets we need. During the maneuvering, we see a couple of stray dogs kickin’ it in the station. They’re playing around in the midst of a small crowd. The locals ignore them. So what do we do? (And by we, I mean Beth and Jessica.)

“Awwwwww! How KYUTE!” *insert petting and “such a good girl” ’s here*

They rejoin John and I in line. The dogs follow, of course. The locals are snickering and such, while trying to avoid the disease-factories our female companions are currently enticing to follow us

We buy our tickets and exit the station as a few helpful folks attempt to get the dogs away from us.

Three seconds later, the dogs follow us out into the city. We begin walking up the street that leads to the church.

The dogs follow.

We reach the church with our escort of dogs. There are three at this point, weaving through traffic just like we are. In the piazza that holds the church, there are wide green spaces filled with…

…other stray dogs. There are some eight dogs running around now. Luckily, they find each other more interesting than the dorky Americans.

We picture up the church. We can’t help but comment how different Pompeii feels from every other place we’ve been to so far. The weather was great, and the environment just felt…paradisaical.

We head off in the direction of the ruins. We stop at a McDonalds. (Oh yes, it was there. Overpriced and totally not worth it, but there. We used it as a bathroom break.)

We finally get to the ruins entrance. We purchase our tickets happily (oh no, I’m not done with that) and are treated to a complimentary map.

We walk through the gate and open the map…and have a mild panic attack. The Pompeii ruins sprawl over a ridiculous amount of land. There are amphitheaters, stadiums, vineyards, mini-theaters, bathhouses, a modern restaurant/gift shop, villas, and of course rows and rows and rows of houses.

Instead of planning a path through the entirety of the ruins, we just start walking and hope for the best.

The first major sight we see? The dogs.

Our escort of three rejoins us. It is at this point that we agree upon naming them. The larger female is dubbed “Sasha”. The medium sized male earns the name “Marco”. The smaller pup becomes “Spartacus”, or “Sparty” if you’re cool enough. (I was the only one to be so cool. Ha.)

Sasha practically leads us through the first set of ruins. We do the tourist thing and take pictures in a totally respective fashion.

At some point, we lose the dogs and subsequently become lost amidst the grid of streets. We stumble upon a stadium and picture that. We stumble a little further and see some interesting villas. We stumble through a vineyard and come face to face with people.

Dead people.

We learn later that the “bodies” on display are plaster reproductions. Thank goodness. That’d just be weird and macabre.

We happen upon one villa worth specifically mentioning. The entrance and roomage isn’t particularly entertaining, but it leads you to the garden in the rear.

We stopped for some time in this garden. It was perhaps a bit longer than a basketball court, with a center line defined by a water trench dotted with statue platforms. The edges of the garden are lined with trees, a number of which rain down cherry blossoms with the soft breeze. It was horrifically relaxing.

We pulled ourselves away from the tranquility there in order to pedal-to-the-medal our way through the rows and rows and rows of houses in search of the amphitheater.

Several picture stops later, we get there and picture that mess up. Of course, it’s not just an amphitheater. There’s a mini amphitheater and a large grassy square to boot.

Picture picture picture, moving on.

We head up a large staircase and arrive on a whole new plane of the city. This one nets us photos of huge piazza areas, fallen temples, and a shot at the gift shop. (It was built into the architecture of the ancient houses, but totally modern otherwise. Interesting indeed.)

We have another restroom break (terribly interesting, I know) then power through to the exit. This, again, isn’t as easy as it sounds. We take a wrong turn to start, and then stop at a bath house. We pass a row of assorted arches and are deposited in the “Mystery Villa”, which is a terrible joke played on tourists in a semihurry. It would be a simple walk through, but the powers that be deemed it necessary to block off certain doorways. So the whole place is a maze. Awesome.

We finally Theseus our way out (Minotaur and all), ditch the final gift shop, and attempt to figure out how to get back to the other side of the city. Theoretically there’s a bus, but theoretically only gets you so far.

We walk the length of the city (Again, technically…see why leaving our stuff at the hostel was so awesome?) with visions of missing our train dancing in our heads. We make it there extrasweaty and lunchless. There’s a cafe attached to the train station, so we spend our 15 minutes scarfing sandwiches and cokes. We buy snacks for the train and sit out on the platform.

It is at this point that a spider enters our tale. Or just a possible gypsy.

A preteen girl tries to sell us lighters. We don’t smoke, or have any legitimate use for a lighter. Also, we’re wary of con artists. We try to be niceish in our dismissals.

The girl spot my cookies, and asks for one. Not only have I not opened them, they’re my cookies. I pretend to not understand what she wants.

She calls me a bad, ugly person. I can’t help but laugh.

The train shows up, we secure our seats. We’re headed to Naples. We notice, over the course of the trip, that there is a group of preteens (my favorite person from earlier included) working the train for money. They skip us. Apparently word gets around. So the rest of the trip was uneventful, right? Right. (Unless you count the cross-eyed guy who reeked of alcohol and asked us for money in a voice so quiet that no one could tell what he said.)

In Naples, we transfer over to a Rome train. This is the splurge train of the trip, the IC Plus.

Woo hoo, I know you’re excited.

Theoretically, this entitles us to a private seating area for six (though we only have four). Actually, it nets us three seats in one compartment and one on the other side of the train. We claim a section (there are assigned seats, but we’re too cool for that) and sprawl.

Before the train ever begins moving, the people with our seat number show up. Dern. We move to our actual seats (plus one we don’t have, of course) and hope for the best. Everything’s good until…the guy with Beth’s seat shows up. He’s nice, and speaks English, so a switch isn’t too hard to arrange.

Again, there are a group of vendors working the train. A really nasal guy mumbling “Acqua…” and an annoying lady yelling “Giornale!” We remix these sounds into a beat that would annoy anyone, especially the two other people in our compartment. We shut up eventually.

A nice relaxing trip later (eased along with plenty of Scribble game goodness) we’re in Rome, getting set to train back to Castiglion F.no. We meet up with a few other F.no-ers and verify our train info. Everything goes good until the conductor comes to check tickets. There is a difference between a 1st class, 2nd class, and 1st/2nd class ticket. We have 2nd class, and are in a 1st/2nd class car. We’re forced to move back three cars. Along the way, we see our fellow F.no-ers. We snicker, knowing they’ll be following us shortly. A little further back, we see more F.no-ers. W’re laughing at this point. We reach the right car and wait to watch the others get booted past us.

They do, of course, and we laugh at them.

We’re nice people.

Enter: Castiglion Fiorentino. The train station is at the base of the hill/mountain/whatever that the center sits on top of. Awesome. More walking, this time with packs.

Or not. Beth comes to the rescue with one of her local friends, who has offered to drive her up. We are invited to come with, which we happily accept.

Score one some preplanning.

A little unpacking, and we’re tanked.

Sleep comes easy.

END SATURDAY

END MEGATRIP