Ancient Ruins

What a great second day in Napoli! We woke early and ate breakfast at the hotel buffet. We had yogurt, cereal, coffee and tea and lemon and chocolate cakes. We left in the morning and started toward the ancient ruins of Pompeii and Hurculaneum.

First, we went to the ancient ruins of Hurculaneum (Ercolano Scavi). It was actually a long walk to the entrance of the ruins from the train station, though we were able to stop along the way to get Jessica some new shoes (her ballerina shoes and sandals weren’t doing much for her feet with all the walking). We made our purchase and continued on to the ruins. They were really amazing. Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. and the volcanic ash and mud from the eruption covered the city of Ercolano and perfectly preserved the city and its buildings.

We saw lots of preserved houses and even a tavern. There was a shrine inside a cave with lots of tunnels leading away from it. It was really cool because it looked like people could have still been living there. There was even a grove of lemon trees still growing in the courtyard at a house.
We left Ercolano and continued on to Pompeii, but unfortunately we boarded the wrong train at the train station. We realized our mistake and got on the right train. We made it to Pompeii at 4 p.m., but they let the last people enter at 3:30 p.m. because they close at 5 p.m.

We were a little bummed out because we weren’t going to be able to see Pompeii, but we saw a ramp to the side of the exit so we figured we would walk along this ramp and take some photos of the ruins we were not going to see. We continued on the walkway and saw some stairs, so we decided to climb them. We got to the top and took some more photos, since the edge of the ruins was right uphill from the city center of Pompeii. Then we saw that we were right beside the exit to the ruins, but there was no guard at the exit. So Jessica and I decided to try our luck and enter through the exit gate. We made it through with no complications because there were several tour groups coming out at the same time. So even though the man at the ticket window said that we had to come back tomorrow, we made it in to Pompeii!

Pompeii was awesome. I had read in almost every travel report on the internet that Ercolano was the better set of ruins because it was so much closer to Mount Vesuvius and therefore was more perfectly preserved, but Pompeii was just on a totally different scale. Pompeii was a city of about 60,000 when Mount Vesuvius erupted, so it was a lot bigger than Ercolano.

We saw houses and taverns, shops and a governmental forum. We even decided to test our luck by walking to the end of the ruins to see the amphitheater, even though the warning sirens were blaring, signaling the end of visiting hours. The amphitheater was awesome; like a smaller version of the Colosseum. We even got to walk inside it and got some amazing photos.

We walked back around the ruins to the train station and took the train back into Napoli. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went in search of some good seafood dinner.

We walked down to the Castel dell’Ovo, because there were a few seafood restaurants in that area, but none of them were very busy, so we thought we would try our luck somewhere on the seaside.

We found a restaurant called Gusto & Gusto. We got a table for two on the sidewalk overlooking the
gulf and it was beautiful. When we sat down, they brought us two glasses of Prosecco (sparkling white wine, think Italy’s version of champagne). We ordered an Ischia salad to start. It was lettuce with parmesan, small mozzarella and prosciutto. We made our own dressing with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then Jessica had Veal Lemon Scalopene and I had Linguini with Octopus and Tomatoes.
Jessica’s veal was cooked perfectly and had a nice, sweet lemon sauce on top. My dish had linguini with an entire octopus and tomatoes, olives and capers. I thought that the dish would come with slices of octopus, similar to how you would have with calamari. But no, it was a whole octopus. I ate the legs, but not anything else. Jessica told me not to eat the head or she would get sick.

After dinner, we had a lovely tiramisu that was very good. It was not as sticky as normal. It wasn’t soaked and wet, but dry (in a good way). Also, our waiter brought us two shots each, one of limoncello and one of limoncello that was made with cantaloupe (we will call it meloncello). We had already had two half-liters of house white wine, but we had the limoncello and meloncello as well. They were delicious. Jessica said that she would be in trouble with any more of the meloncello. When our tiramisu came, our waiter refilled our glasses with another shot of limoncello and meloncello each.
I said, “Are you trying to get us drunk?” To which he replied, “Little.” We finished the extra servings of limoncello and meloncello, paid our smaller-than-you-would-think bill and walked home.

We were feeling a little inspirational from Louie, who is the king of cleptomania, so we took the carafe that our wine came in. It is a nice half-liter sized momento that we can bring back to the United States.
Tomorrow we are headed to Capri. We are planning a nice fun trip to the island and are looking forward to another great day in Naples. Ciao!