He Was a Day Tripper

Excavators at Pompeii had to dig through heaps of ash to uncover the preserved ruins of this lost world.

Refer to a map of Italy. We wanted our big locales in this country to be Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice. I listed those from south to north, which logically made sense for a direction of travel since Italy would be bookended by Crete and Paris. The plan almost worked to perfection, except there were no flights from Crete (Heraklion) to Naples. Consequently we finagled it so that Naples (and the neighboring attractions at Pompeii) was a day trip from Rome. Europe's trains, and Italy's in particular, make it so very easy to hit any major city. Italy has a lot of major cities; name a food, and it's probably a big city in Italy.

Monument at the Pontifical Shrine of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii

With our excess of time in Florence, we took a local train out to Pisa to take the requisite photos holding up the leaning tower. And then from Pisa, we took an even local-er train to the closest public beach out in Viareggio. I felt like it would be unfair to Italy if we enjoyed the Mediterranean waters of Greece but not Italy. It also helped me justify my swimsuit purchase, if I got a second use out of it.

What follows are photos detailing one day in Pompeii, a couple hours in Naples, a couple hours in Pisa, and one day in Viareggio.

Pompeii

Mosaic of ancient Pompeii

As early as we could muster energy, we checked out of the Funny Palace hostel in Rome and took the train to Naples. The train stations in both Rome and Naples do not offer lockers, but rather a service where you need to drop your bags off with people who take care of them. Since they charge per bag, we tried to outsmart them in Naples and threw both of our backpacks into a single large garbage bag that Phil had been using for dirty clothes. They were wise to our tricks though and told us storing our garbage bag was "impossible". Refusing to bay 13€ PER BAG for the day, we carried onward with our bags on our backs. We caught a train connection past the famous volcano and into Pompeii. We had a delicious train station sandwich/calzone hybrid which rivaled Sweden's cheese sandwich.

Phil was excited for Pompeii and it boiled over onto me before arriving. I did not have any concept of how big the preserved ruins would be though. I expected something like the Roman Forum, but in actuality it is an entire city, once with a population over 10,000! And for about $20 you can spend your day walking through block after block, house after house, of the city that was once buried under a dozen feet of ash from Mount Vesuvius's first century eruption. Advice: try not to go on a 95℉ day.

For the cost of entry, you get a map which divides the city in nine districts. There is a name for most of the buildings, not all of which may be open during your visit. I am not so magical as to remember the names of most of the buildings, so just enjoy my pictures. If you ever visit, plan to arrive so that half your time is before 1330 and half your time is after 1330. The most interesting buildings are supervised by staff and closed off when staff isn't there. Half of those interesting buildings have staff in the morning, and then at 1330 each worker moves to their afternoon station in a different building, closing off from visitors where they previously were.

Phil likes the cobblestone-for-giants.

Anfiteatro di Pompeii

Pink Floyd had some famous concert in Pompeii's amphitheatre.
At the time, very few Italians knew who Pink Floyd were, but today they are immortalized.

 

Mount Vesuvius in the background

Killer volcano in back again

Casts of adults, children, and a dog frozen in time by volcanic ash

 

The forum at Pompeii

Excavations of a basilica

Temple of Apollo

Sweet parasol, dude.

Stadium at the Temple of Isis

Naples

The most castle-y lookin' castle I've ever seen: Castel Nuovo

From Pompeii, we purposely took the local train slightly past the Naples train station which would ship us back to Rome later. By skipping over our stop, we forced ourselves to walk through most of the city. I hear Naples is a city worthy of a few days, but we didn't even have a few hours to spare after spending most of the day wandering through the Pompeian ruins. In under three hours, we saw some sights, ate a pizza, and barely made it back to the train station in time to catch the last train to Rome. Naples is supposedly the home of the original pizza, so making sure we had time for a meal there was priority.

Basilica Reale Pontificia San Francesco da Paola

The Royal Palace at Piazza del Plebiscito

It was difficult deciding on a worthy pizza place for our one meal in Naples, but we got a decent place. By the time we arrived, we were disgusting, sweaty pigs from walking for so long with our backpacks, and moving quickly to ensure we had time to eat before our scheduled train. We were embarrassed with how drenched in sweat we were. We forgave ourselves for stinking up the establishment and had a good meal. I can't say it was more than good though. It may be the original pizza, but it's not a special pizza.

My original Napolese pizza from Pizzeria Da Attilio

Italy's use of tomato sauce on their pizzas is infrequent, and light on the sauce when they do use it. That's a positive to me. But the big negative of Italian pizza is that nowhere in Italy do they cut your pizza for you, unless you purchase by weight, and that's really annoying. I can't enjoy my pizzas nearly as much if I need to cut the pieces myself. It's often hard to wrestle through the dough with a regular dinner knife.

A big slice of downtown Naples is a series of alleys not much wider than this one.
Our pizza restaurant of choice is nearby.

We returned to Rome and were homeless one final night. Public parks are hard to find in Rome, so we ended up sleeping like real bums outside of the train station. I didn't sleep that much but it wasn't the worst night of our trip - probably the third worst. A policeman later woke us up to tell us to stop being bums; but there was only about a half-hour until the train station opened and an hour before our train, so not much was lost.

Pisa and the Beach

Look at all these posers trying to hold up a building. This is NOT how you hold up the Torre di Pisa.

Not much to say about Pisa. There's the famous tower and the grounds around the tower with a couple other buildings, I think a museum and a church and something else. The Leaning Tower of Pisa does lean more than you'd probably expect, so you're in for a shock when you see it in person. I do recommend dropping by. For a hefty fee, you can walk to the top of the tower.

A college town with some canals and very little going on

Torre di Pisa with the Cattedrale di Pisa in back

Phil struggled to find his unique photo with the tower.

Looking straight up from as close as you can get without paying

A better view of the gorgeous cathedral

THIS is how you support the Torre di Pisa

Less than an hour around the leaning tower sated our need to see a leaning tower and then we were off to Viareggio for the beach. Private resort beaches comprise most of the town, but there is an extremely small public beach down at the townie end. I jumped in the water and forgot where I was swimming. Surfers do frequent this beach so I had to be careful not to go too deep into sea, lest I wanted to get surfed over. I treaded the warm waters, sunbathed, and walked the pier while Phil got some coffee or something.

Monumento L'Attesa by the pier with the beauteous Italian countryside mountains in the background

When dusk fell on the beach, Phil and I got some pizza by the etto again, and then gelati. We caught a late train back to Florence and retired for the night. After a final day in Florence (covered in the Florence post), we embarked on one more Trenitalia train trip through Bologna toward Venice, our last Italian destination.

The Pisa Subway mascot felt bad for Phil and helped him capture his unique photo with the Leaning Tower.