Fifth Day of Cruise, Port of Naples and Pompeii
Another Raffles breakfast, so we can get off the cruise ship at 8 a.m. when we are docked and cleared. While eating breakfast we noticed the ship on the other side of the post terminal we were pulling into: The Norwegian Epic, younger sister of our Norwegian Spirit. It is the newest and largest ship in the fleet, while we are the oldest and smallest. Big sister and little sister crossing paths, though little sister is the older sister, and big sister is the younger one.
Looking at the guide book last night, Steve’s guide said to purchase tram tickets in the terminal, and you could get day pass train tickets to Pompeii that included in-city travel. I didn’t know if that meant it included the trams, but after reading the guide book last night, my goal was to get tickets before leaving the terminal and find out if they did cover the tram. But nothing at the terminal was open, and we didn’t see any trams anyway. It seems like our departure time from the ship is always before the ports we are visiting are open.
No tickets? no problem! The train station should be somewhere …. that-away. We can walk. So we walked the approximate mile to the train station.
Walking the Naples portside to the train station does affirm that the tour book is right about one thing — Naples does have a much grittier feel to it than the cities we have visited so far, Nor does that impression change when we enter the train station.
I step up to a window and ask to purchase 4 round trip tickets to Pompeii. The lady doesn’t seem to communicate well, but we manage to purchase 4 tickets out, and 4 back. Each is supposed to cost EUR 2.90 but somehow that adds up to EUR 33.60 not EUR 23.20. And it had to be cash, no credit, which seemed weird for a public place.
We tried to put the tickets in the machine to pass through the turnstiles, but it didn’t like them, so another agent assisted us by writing whatever validation on them that they do, and passed us through. There weren’t any signs up for Sorrento (final destination for the train that services Pompeii), for several minutes, then it said Sorrento binari 8, so we got on 8. Just as we got loaded, and thought we were ready to go, suddenly everyone was getting up and off. We were being switched to train number 7.
We were fortunate to get seats together on the way out, back to back, but as we went on from stop to stop, the train got more and more crowded. People packed into the section where the doors opened and closed to let people on the trains, until it became hard for people to get off, or more people to get on. People had to push through them there to get to the aisles between the seats, where there was a little standing room.
There also seemed to be a lot of young bucks, or maybe I should say young cocks, that seemed to be accumulating and finding and forming themselves into a pack (pack of roosters?) in the standing area. They were hitting and smacking each other in ranking and familiarly affection actions. Only one of them had the riding too low pants problem, but he was in our face most of the time. Fortunately he had very high riding underwear that wasn’t having the falling down problem.
Pompeii was another cash only ticket purchase. The city was interesting, but the street markings were not very helpful. Took us a long time to realize that the numbers on the buildings were like street/block numbers, that kept starting over again at points that were not clear to us. And while the map would show street names so you could find intersections of certain streets, when you got to an intersection, the sign post didn’t show both street names — we were lucky if it has something that approximated one of the street names.
Rick Steve’s book proved much less helpful here as well. Some of his directions had us going past things we were expecting, and then his tour led us through blocked streets that it took time to find our way around. We spent a heated half hour after stumbling onto the theatre when we couldn’t find the Temple of Isis, trying to find the Amphitheatre down streets that ended up being dead ends, even though the map told us that was the way to get there.
We did learn some interesting social and structural items about the city and times. There were a lot of series of raised stones in the streets. Turns out the city washed the streets daily by flooding them with water. The stones were stepping stones so people could cross the wet streets without getting their feet wet. They were spaced a uniform space, to allow uniformly wide axled chariots to pass around them.
There there were all the pillars of bricks we saw. Seems all the marble pillars in the city weren’t really marble. Instead, they build the pillars of bricks, then made a marble pasted that the shaped on the outside to give the looks of a marble pillar. Pompeii was a middle class city, and that was their form of middle class economy — making it look more expensive than it was.
The train was much less crowded on the way back, though it took us awhile to get seats. There was a traveling accordion/drum/string band that played up and down the aisle and passed the plastic cup. I put in a 1 EUR or 2 EUR coin, not sure which one I had. I think it was the 2 EUR coin. I also got a couple of short video clips of the music.
Click Here to see the video and hear the music
After getting off at the last station, we found the walk back easier than going, and managed to work out most of the crankiness we had accumulated trying to find the Amphitheatre. We all got showers back at the ship, went up to Raffles and picked up a snack. Betsy and I went swimming and then used the hot tub, which was hot today.
Now we are writing on Deck 8 while Hector, assistant cruise director, is leading a trivia contest showing slides of various buildings around the world.
Tonight we will be using Carly’s coupon to go to the Shogun Restaurant. Reservations at 7 p.m. Nathan and Carly go on hers, and Betsy and I have to pay the extra surcharge. I asked about the bottle of wine, and they told me we could substitute soda for bottle of wine.
Well, the Shogun was a great enjoyable success! Carly had the Shrimp roll, Shrimp salad, fried rice with Shrimp, Mooshu Pork and Banana Pancakes with Coconut ice cream. Carly also ate a lot of my “glass noodles” as she called them. I had pork ribs, Hot and Sour soup, that noodle thing, spiced lamb and Brule Crembrulle or something like that. We had no problem getting the kids each a can of Root Beer in place of the bottle of wine on the coupon. I had two pots of green tea from the start of the meal through the finish.
The wait staff was very attentive, and the environment was more peaceful than the main dining rooms. There wasn’t the crush of people that there is in the main dining rooms.
At The Rainbow 