Pompeii... Or not.

First off, I haven't been able to figure out how to get photos uploaded from the iPad. Will try again tomorrow.

We decided to go to Pompeii today and took the hotel shuttle into town following breakfast overlooking the bay. Taking the train was super easy. At the station, we bought two all day passes for about 10 euro each and hopped on the Sorrento to Naples line. It's the only train currently running from Sorrento, so it was hard to screw up. About 15 stops and 30 minutes later, we got off at the Pompeii Scavi stop and walked a few minutes to find enough people to fill a medium sized villge hanging out in front of the entrance. It turns out that a workers strike delayed the opening of Pompeii until 11am and people had been lining up since 830am that morning.

Instead of waiting in that mess, we turned around and got back on the train and continued towards Naples until we reached the stop for Hurculeanium, another archeological site. That site is smaller than Pompeii, but better preserved. Jess and I toured the site for about two hours and only covered about half of it. Lucky for her, they were out of English tour books or I would also have been reading everything I could about each little bit. She was a good sport though and let me soak up history until I was content and ready to wander back for the train ride to Sorrento.

Once we got back, we decided to go to the main piazza in the center of town for a large and late lunch. We started with bruschetta, our favorite Italian appetizer, and followed up with tortellini for her and lasagna for me. Oh, and two bottles of sparkling white wine. It was great to have a long and leisurely lunch people watching. This must be standard practice as the chairs in the restaurant all face the street as opposed to facing whomever you are eating with. Since we were completely full, we naturally stopped for gelato before catching the shuttle back to the hotel. Finishing out the night was snacks and wine on our balcony overlooking the bay. Day 2, success.