Day 17, Rome/Pompeii, October 6th

Great day but bad headache, so I shall make this brief.

Woke up at 7 to catch bus to train to metro to Pompeii.  Once there, got audio guides.

Pompeii is utterly fantastic.  It is huge. The most destroyed stuff still maintains shape, while the preserved stuff has frescoes, fountains, paint, and statues.  We saw an amphitheater, two theaters, a necropolis, a brothel, several houses, the forum, a temple, two baths, the wall, roads, plumbing, and much much more.

The audio guide was amazing - perhaps 80 or 90 separate sections averaging 3 minutes each.  Easily enough that we could have gone for  2 days and not seen it all.  Narration was great and the facts both interesting and informative.  When the eruption happened, two meters deep or pumice fell, then two meters of ash.  That's about 13 feet!

The detail on the flash-ashed guys is amazing. You can clearly see sandals, toenails, and folds of clothes.

Stray dogs were everywhere, sleeping in destroyed houses and squares.  But don't picture, mangy feral packs.  Picture the cutest, fuzziest, and most adorable dogs in a range of awesome breeds.  I would adopt each and every one.  We have a few pictures to prove it.

Mt. Vesuvius was majestic in the background, and we set out to find a bus up the volcano about 3:45.  However, the last bus up left at 3:30!  Reiter thought that we could walk around and find a random company to drive us up.  Within moments we did!  However, the top was closed at 4:00, so they said they would drive us up halfway to a panoramic view.  We hopped in the van with a nice couple and off we went!

Unfortunately, the van overheated upon getting to the base of the mountain.  We sat there for a bit, then turned around.  On the way back we argued about a refund in broken English, which only made his terrifying driving even worse (at one point on the way up he was on the phone, radio blaring, counting money while driving into incoming traffic and maneuvering around a stopped car in our lane).  When we got back, the company made him give us our money back, though he wasn't happy about it at all.

I got a headache at this point, possibly the flip side of the adrenaline from arguing with he guy.  As we took metro, train, bus back, it got worse and worse. Grabbed Dan Brown's "Inferno" (which is so far his trashiest yet), and Stephen King's "It" at the English section of a bookstore in the train station.  Finally made way back home at about 9.

It didn't rain all day, it was lovely at Pompeii, but still got really sweaty walking around, so showered just now and feel a bit better.

Blister blog:  both Reiter and my feet are feeling pretty good and getting use to things.  However, I've never had callouses on my pinky toes before and they feel really weird.  I keep thinking that there is some piece of something in my bed by my feet that I can't kick off, following my toes around.

Tomorrow is the last full day of Eurotrip, and we are going to go out with the Vatican!  We are both exhausted and ready to come home, but today was one of the best and I think the Vatican will be right up there!