Pompeii

Our train left Rome at 9am for Napoli (Naples), an easy 1 hour 10 minute ride. We had recently read in our indispensable Rick Steves' Italy guide book that Naples is known for its thievery and poorness, and why live there when Sorrento was only an hour away? Since we had booked a hostel in Sorrento for the night and would still have all our bags with us if we toured Naples, we opted to cut our losses on that one too by skipping it. Instead, we would catch the commuter train, Circumvesuviana, to Pompeii instead, where we read that free luggage storage awaited us.

Sure enough, we were able to ditch our bags easily at the gates of Pompeii, an amazingly large city of ruins whose vastness I'd had no idea of. For 11 Euros each we spent hours in fascination gazing at the history of this tragic Roman city. I remember watching a documentary on Pompeii when I was a lot younger, and have always felt intrigued by it. I'd had no idea it was in Italy though, and it didn't hit me until I was inside the gates that I was actually visiting a place I had only dreamed of visiting when I was younger. It filled me with awe and gratitude that I've been able to have so many amazing opportunities to see the world. I wish my parents could have this opportunity too--I think they would love seeing Pompeii especially. In this next picture you can see Mt. Vesuvius in the background, and you can connect the two remaining peaks to picture the mountain as it was before it erupted.Regardless of our fascination, there is so much to see that after a while one crumbling building looks like the next, and our feet were aching from walking. We called it a day at Pompeii and boarded the train for the 30 minute ride to Sorrento. Unfortunately, our hostel was located one stop before actual Sorrento, and we missed it, so we had to return to a different train and wait for a few minutes before it took us the other direction. We did find our hostel with no problems, and wow, is it an improvement from our last one! It looks like a hotel that I wouldn't be able to afford, yet it's cheaper than most. Not only is it clean, modern and comfortable, it offers a free breakfast and dinners of your choice for only 5 Euro. Since it was Sunday and no stores were open, we took advantage of this option and dined on pasta. We also decided that we like this place so much would stay a second night and see the sights of Sorrento the next day.

This is the first hostel we've stayed at where we shared a dorm room. Our roomates are two girls and another couple, who all seem nice. I will post pictures of the hostel hopefully in my next blog or two.