pocketlizard

I’m about to go to sleep, after a long day walking around Pompeii, and I think the people whose room this computer is in want to go to sleep too, so I’ll have to summarise.

Day 1

• Naples appears chaotic, messy and a bit seedy, especially after the peaceful small island we’ve come from
• We’re pretty tired after our climb, a day of wandering around, a late night waiting for the ferry & getting settled on board (queuing for cabin key, etc), not quite enough sleep on the ferry (they woke us up at 7:30, after leaving Stromboli after 11), and carrying our big bags through Naples & on the bus. Also, Steve was feeling a bit sick. So we slacked off & sat around in the hostel all day.

Day 2

• Steve, in his own words, “turned into a snot producing machine”. We decided to take it easy and skip Herculaneum. In the morning we went to the National Archeology Museum, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately, Steve spent most of his time sitting on any bench or chair he could find, and I was walking pretty slowly and carefully too, having caught whatever it was the Steve has.
• Some of the highlights of the museum: the mosaics from Pompeii; the dodgy pictures & phallic protection charms (with bells and cute little wings) in the “Secret Room”, also from Pompeii; a amusing trio of giggling 14 year old boys in the Secret Room; and ancient (ie, pre Roman Empire) safety pins.
• In the afternoon we both collapsed in our room going “blergh”, and did as little as possible.

Day 3

• Today we went to Pompeii. Steve was feeling better, and I seem to have so far escaped anything worse than a constant slight headache. So we were able to make a pretty good attempt at Pompeii. We didn’t see everything, but we saw a good deal. I don’t think it’s possible to see it all in one day, because there are no toilets on the inside.
• Highlights: the House of the Faun, the bakery, the “lupenarium”.
• Lowlights: forgetting my hat, sunscreen and knee-braces. Luckily I still had Nurofen in my bag from the Vatican excursion, and I’d brought my umbrella as a charm against rain, so I had something to make shade.
• When we got back, we had to rush to get all our chores done, because we leave tomorrow morning for Croatia. We got our train reservations at the station when we came back from Pompeii, then stopped off at the hostel for laundry and photo storage devices. We’ve been running short on storage space for a few days now, having been unable to find any internet places with DVD burners. So we left our laundry with the very kind people at the laundromat, who bumped us up the queue when they found out that we actually, really couldn’t get it back tomorrow, and headed off to look for somewhere, anywhere with a DVD burner. We headed up to an internet place recommended by the laundromat people, but they didn’t have one. We decided to follow the road up in the direction of the museum, as Steve remembered seeing a camera shop there. By this time we were thinking that we’d just have to buy more USB or camera cards. So we walked up the road, in the drizzle, past many second hand bookshops, none of which appeared to have English sections (it was torture :P). Eventually Steve said something to the effect of “I suppose we’d better turn back”, and I said - pointing at the shop immediately in front of us - “photo shop”. It was amusing. They did have a burner, and set our 4 or so gigs of photos to burning. After quite a while, Steve had to run off to the laundromat to pick up our clothes just before closing time. About 5 minutes later I got our photos and set off back to the laundromat. I made one wrong turn, and it was raining pretty hard, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. Steve and I helped the laundry people to fold our clothes and headed back to the hostel to drop them off.
• For dinner we went to a pizza place recommended by our Lonely Planet, and it was good. They only make two sorts of pizza there: margherita and marinara. There was a take-a-number system to get a table. We were seated at a table for 4, with the couple who were next in line. They were on holiday from Germany. By the time we left the line had got much longer. Steve and I stopped off for gelato on the way home.

Tomorrow

• We catch the train to Rome at 9:45, and from there head to Ancona. We have about an hour in Ancona to organise ferry tickets to Zadar. We’ve done our research, so that hopefully won’t be a problem. The ferry to Zadar is another overnight one, and we get there at 9am. Then we hang around there for most of the day, probably checking out their Sea Organ, which looks pretty nifty. Then we catch the bus down to Murter, where our sailing trip leaves the next day.

Commentary

• This was supposed to be brief. Oh well…

So on saturday we got the train down to Reggio di Calabria, and then the ferry to Stromboli. It was quite an epic voyage, but Steve has written it up already, so I won’t repeat it.

Stomboli was really cool. The little town is all twisty little streets and classic Mediterranean architecture. It’s a very laid back place. Even without the volcano it’d be a great little holiday location. It’s main business is tourism, and the main street - wide enough for golf buggy - is full of shops selling souveniers. Their thing seems to be lizards/geckos, and everything that doesn’t have a volcano on it has a lizard. So, lizards being my thing, I bought a halter top covered in lizards, and a sarong covered in lizards. I also bought a cute little fridge magnet. It’s a volcano, with lava coming out the top in the form of red beads on wire. So cool! I also nearly bought some Five Fingers shoes, which they had at the mountain climbing shop, but they didn+t have my size. Woe.

We climbed the mountain on the second night. The weather wasn’t great, and they warned us that we might not get to see anything. When we got to the top it looked like that would be the case. A fog had come up about 10 minutes before we got to the top, and we could’t see very far at all. But after we’d waited around for about an hour, the fog started clearing. The mountain wasn’t doing much, but at least we could now see an occasional red glow. But soon the mountain got bored of toying with us and did some exploding. We got quite a few of the explosions on video. There was one in particular that was huge, with a long stream of lava going about 50m up in the air. Really impressive.

Last night we got the overnight ferry up to Naples. We had a cabin, with our own boathroom, complete with shower! Pretty nifty. Oooh, and how could I forget - on the way to Stromboli we went on a hydrofoil! Physics is awesome.

We’re going to be in Naples for 3 nights. We’re planning to take it easy today, and then spend a couple of days exploring Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the local archiology museum, which the brochures and the hostel guy both call “the best in the world”. I imagine they’ve got some pretty cool stuff. Then we’re off to sea again, by another overnight ferry. We’re going to spend about a third of our nights on boats this holiday. Hooray!

Btw: I’ve got the hang of saying “si” now. It clicked on our first day on Stromboli, as did “Gratzie”. I’m going to have all sorts of trouble stopping it when I get back

I’ve realised that the last few rambling posts haven’t told you what I’ve been doing (other than obsessing about power usage). So…

Yesterday I went to Palatine Hill. It was pretty cool. You could wander around quite a bit & get right up close to the ruins. They’ve also restored a couple of rooms of Emperor Augustus’ palace. You can only go in in groups of five, so I had to wait in line a bit. Quite a few people didn’t seem to notice the line and tried to go straight through. The guy in charge of the line kept having to chase them back. One guy didn’t seem to get it at all, and it took a while for the line guy to explain it to him, and when he’d finally got it and wandered off the line guy rolled his eyes at us and sighed. Amusing… The rooms were pretty cool. There’s quite a lot of Augustus’ palace still standing, and you can see faded frescos in the walls all over the place. I didn’t go over the Forum part of the area, because I was getting pretty tired and hungry. I’ll go back this afternoon to look at the rest (I have a week-long ticket). I’m getting pretty tired now - a morning is all I can handle and then I come back to the hostel and crash. Luckily I’ll have lots of resting time tomorrow.

Tomorrow we’re catching a train down to Reggio di Calabria, where we’re catching a ferry to Stromboli. Our train leaves at 6:45am - ow… I probably won’t be posting very frequently for a while. I’m not expecting great internet (or any internet) on trains and ferries and small volcanic islands.

Now I’m heading out to buy a memory card for my camera. I only have 128mb, and I can fill that up in about 3 hours… Once we’re away from civilisation I won’t be able to empty the card onto a usb stick every day, so I think a bigger card will be the best plan. Steve’s plan to use the ipod for storage has been foiled by the fact that it needs a firewire connection to charge, and we don’t have one. Oh, the technology!

The hostel we’re in has strange bathrooms. Instead of the usual chipboard partition things, they’ve built little rooms for the toilets and the showers. Along one side of the room are three little rooms for the toilets, and along the other side are three little rooms for the showers. A side effect of this is that each toilet and each shower needs to have its own light. For some reason, people always switch off the shower lights, but never switch off the toilet ones. This drives me nuts. Every time I’m in there, I switch off all the lights that are on (checking first that there’s no one in there, of course). The disposable plates and spoons that come with our free breakfasts and dinners drive me a little crazy too. The water fountains that just constantly have a similar effect, although not quite so bad. Yesterday I found one that was behind a fence. No one could get to all that water just running away down the drain, except the pigeon that was sitting on the spout. This is crazy! *twitch twitch*

But I’ve gone a bit off topic. The interesting question here is: why do people switch off the shower lights but not the toilet ones? I think it has to do with the doors. The shower doors open inwards, but because the toilets are in the way, the toilet doors open out. This means that the toilet doors are usually nearly closed, to be out of the way, while the shower doors are open. I think the open door makes the light (and fan) more noticable, and also redundant, as the room’s main light shines in. But the toilet ones are not visible/noticable (unless you’re a power-saving freak like me), and the toilets are dark inside if the light isn’t on. Any other theories?

Today was my first day out and about on my own. I’m glad that I’ve had a few days to get used to the place. I was pretty nervous about it before leaving, and quite terrified a couple of times, like in the middle of the night on the plane and at the end of the second day when I was exhausted. But this morning it was all very easy. And I’m more and more in love with Rome each day I’m here.

The first adventure was the peak-hour metro ride. I knew where to go and how to buy my ticket from Monday, and on the platform I spotted an English-speaking tour group to hang around near for extra security. I couldn’t get into the first two trains, but for the third I was right up the front, and shoved my way in like a local. We were packed in like sardines. I couldn’t reach a handhold, but was held up between my fellow sardines quite safely. Nearly everyone got out at the Vatican station (the name of which I can’t remember). I’d forgotten that wednesday is “seeing the Pope” day.

I was headed to Castel sant Angelo, near the Vatican. It was really cool. It wasn’t a one-way, follow the rest, don’t step out of line cattle chute like the others have kinda been. I went over the whole place, and really enjoyed it.

Then I walked along to Palazzo di Giustizia, and over the river and down to Piazza Navona. The buildings around this area are a bit different from near the hostel, and it’s definitely a fancier area. From there I followed the signs through some really picturesque alleyways to the Pantheon.

The Pantheon has to be the most impressive and awe-inspiring of the things I’ve seen so far. I spent about five minutes just standing outside and staring. Inside is really cool too. I took lots of photos, and some video. Steve’s got friday afternoon free and is going to get me to take him to the best bits, and I think the Pantheon is definitely at the top of that list. I can’t put into words how awesome it is, at least not with my internet time ticking down as I try to think.

After that I followed the signs again, heading for the Trevi Fountain, but lost the trail when I got to via del Corso. So I decided to head south and follow my original plan instead. At the end of via del Corso is Piazza Venezia and the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II. It’s a huge monument, cunningly built on a hill so that you can’t tell from the Corso side that there is a hill. These Italians really know how to build monuments, hey… From the top you can see the Colosseum and the ruins of the Forum which lie between the two. I was getting tired and hungry by this point, so I decided to head home, past the Colosseum, which is pretty much on the way.

I got a bit lost on the way (it all looked so easy from the top of the hill!), but sorted myself out without any trouble. Luckily I had my RAC Rome map in my bag, because somewhere along the way I’d lost the hostel one that I’d had in my back pocket. By the time I got there I was really fading, and rather than walk up the hill to the hostel I decided to take the Metro. Line B seems to be the poor cousin of Line A - the Line A trains aren’t grafittied all over, and have TVs. I suppose that’s coz Line A has the Vatican, Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain on it, and Line B has only Colosseo!

Then I walked back to the hostel from Termini, and watched the tail end of Ace Ventura, which someone had on the TV. Tomorrow’s plan is something like: Palatine Hill, the Forum and some Catacombs, maybe followed by the Steve’s conference’s nod to culture, a trip to an art gallery.