Pompeii, Italy
November, 2011
Tuesday, November 1 Pompeii
We drove over 400km today from Assisi to Salerno. No problems! We arrived just on lunchtime, and found nothing opened in Salerno. We found out later, that it was All Souls day, a public holiday in Italy, where everybody visits the cemetery.
We drove 40km to Pompeii, and found a park just outside the entrance. We arrived at 3pm, so we only had 2.5 hours to explore the ruins. The city was huge. We saw all the main sites including the theatre, the forum and the amphitheatre. The place was a holiday resort for the Roman dignitaries of 2000 years ago, before it was buried under the lava when Vesuvius went off back in 79AD.
At 5:30pm, sirens started going off to indicate we had to exit. Unfortunately, we did not have a map, and had no idea how to get back to the entrance that we had come in. We found some people and followed them for 5 min, but they led us to the main entrance. We had to ask security, and found that we had to walk over 1km in the other direction. By the time we got there, I think we were the last to leave. We had dinner in Pompeii, and found a parking ticket on our car. Whoops, and it was such a good parking spot too! Oh well, hopefully Thrifty Car Rental will take care of that for us!
We saw the main cathedral in Pompeii, the church of our lady Roasario. It was packed with people, as was the Piazza. Everyone was there to celebrate All Souls day. So we hung around, and joined in the festivities.
We drove over 400km today from Assisi to Salerno. No problems! We arrived just on lunchtime, and found nothing opened in Salerno. We found out later, that it was All Souls day, a public holiday in Italy, where everybody visits the cemetery.
We drove 40km to Pompeii, and found a park just outside the entrance. We arrived at 3pm, so we only had 2.5 hours to explore the ruins. The city was huge. We saw all the main sites including the theatre, the forum and the amphitheatre. The place was a holiday resort for the Roman dignitaries of 2000 years ago, before it was buried under the lava when Vesuvius went off back in 79AD.
At 5:30pm, sirens started going off to indicate we had to exit. Unfortunately, we did not have a map, and had no idea how to get back to the entrance that we had come in. We found some people and followed them for 5 min, but they led us to the main entrance. We had to ask security, and found that we had to walk over 1km in the other direction. By the time we got there, I think we were the last to leave. We had dinner in Pompeii, and found a parking ticket on our car. Whoops, and it was such a good parking spot too! Oh well, hopefully Thrifty Car Rental will take care of that for us!
We saw the main cathedral in Pompeii, the church of our lady Roasario. It was packed with people, as was the Piazza. Everyone was there to celebrate All Souls day. So we hung around, and joined in the festivities.