Day 25 - Naples and Herculaneum
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Hobbit in Naples
Naples around the train station is nasty. The further away from the train station we got, the better it got. Lucky our hostel is kinda far from the train station. It's not bad, Wendell got us en suite tonight.
We went to Herculanium. It was really cool. Once again Wendell and I managed to somehow go into the 'attraction' through the exit and get all turned around. They have a tourist tour of the dig with numbers corresponding to parragraphs in a pamphlet. Wendell and I have a book. It took a little figuring but we figured out how the archelogical numbering system worked, which is what the book was using. So we got a much more in depth tour of the dig. I really liked it. We spent four hours there. At the end after they closed we were walking back up the ramp, looking down over the dig. I could see that the thermae (bath) which had been closed, was huge and would have been really cool to see. I then preformed one of my best temper tantrums yet complete with jumping up and down, stomping and saying 'it's not fair' many times all while pointing to the thermae. Evidentially the classic temper tantrum is universal because the older german couple walking by burst into laughter because they felt the exact same way about missing the thermae.
Herculanium is really cool and should not be missed
What's That, Hobbit?
Who Has The Better Roman Ruins?
Herculaneum is better than Pompeii. I'm glad Wendell suggested we go. Also Pompeii bathrooms take the prize for unusability. They have the self cleaning kind with 'squat over' toilets. But the 'squat over' toilet was so high I couldn't 'squat over' it. It was up at about hip level. I checked to make sure I wasn't in a guy one, but it was marked for both men and women even though women couldn't actually get their hoo-hoo over the toilet. How stupid is that.
Pompeii is really cool in spite of their stupid toilets. Herculaneum is in a better state of preservation but Pompeii is just huge. It's an entire Roman city with almost all of it dug out. They are starting to restore stuff so you can see what the buildings would have actually looked like. And they are restoring gardens so it's really pretty. It's too bad I can't come back in 200 years because it will be really super cool then with many of the buildings restored. But as cool as Pompeii is, I still recommend if you've only got one day that you go to Herculalium. Besides the buildings being better preserved, because less tourists go there less of it is blocked off. You can wander in and aound almost all of the buildings in Herculanium.
Naples is serioully grosse and I couldn't wait to get out of there. (see Wendell's story about the bus). I was so ready to put Nasty Naples behind me that I did something out of characer for me. I agreed to get on a grotty train that left Nasty Naples at 8.40PM and got to Rome at 11.40 PM without having a confirmed reservation at a place to stay.
Wendell The Planner came through. He pulled out the Rick book and a stack of hostel phamplets and drew a map we could follow until we found a place to stay. Poor Wendell, when we got to the train station the first place we called had a private room for us. Shared bath but no big deal on that. So we didn't get to follow his map looking for a place to stay in Rome at midnight.
Pretty much every tourist map we get in each city has all of the McDonalds listed which is actually nice because in their zeal to make every McDonalds the same the interiors are the same. So you can waltz in, go straight to the back, use the bathroom, then waltz right out without anybody stopping you or making you pay.
Hobbit!
Hobbit On The Bridge To Herculaneum
Hobbit In Herculaneum
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