Sep 12, 2014

FBF & European Tour, Day 11- Pompeii

Happy Friday! I link up today with the amazing Aimee from This Darling Day to share Finding Beauty Friday! I am also continuing with our European Tour and today we go to POMPEII! Check out the past days,

This Darling Day

Continuing our Europe Trip from 2013, 
Check out the previous adventures below: 


This was an all day additional excursion. we left early, about 7:30 am. The rest of the group had a free day in Rome, but we paid the extra amount to go see this, which was about $100 per person.  The bus ride was about 2-1/2 hours long from our camping village to Pompeii, and we went with our tour guide to meet another local tour guide. This was a short, older man, and he might have been the best local tour guide on the whole trip! Not including our Expat Explore tour guide, Ty, who was just awesome. This local guide really painted us a picture of what life would've be like on a normal day in Pompeii.

It was misty raining all day, and to get up into the main part of the city, there was a rather steep incline of cobblestone about 100' of this. You had a rail, but since it was damp, it wasn't much help. We all made it to the top! Hooray! And our tour started. He told us how they'd live daily, we went inside some homes to see the fresco that still were on the wall, even if there gaps missing from the wall, you still felt like you knew how these people lived. We visited a brothel, yeah, that was enlightening. And went through the main parts of town. Then he started telling us the story of the day it went dark. It must have been so scary! I kept telling the Mr., this was so worth the extra money!


Roaming around the ancient ruins, they had these stray dogs lounging around. At the end of the tour, they seemed friendly. So while waiting for the rest of the group to finish up, we were petting them, then worried they'd give us a disease! So we finished up and walked down the hill to go get something to eat. This was after lunch sometime, and we were all starving! Walking down the hill, this guy comes up and coaxes us into his restaurant. Since we didn't have a better plan, we went. Don't eat there if you are ever in Pompeii. It's like a white restaurant, right at the bottom of the hill to the right. I mean, it's right there.  They took forever to bring our foot out, and we were meant to be back on the bus at a certain time, so we were rushing to eat our plates. Now, you're thinking, we're in Italy, all food will be good.... wrong! This plate of spaghetti was so salty, I could barely eat it! And we also paid $7 for a coca cola! There were a couple of tour mates who came in much later and we were worried they wouldn't get their food in time and be late on the bus back! And of course, you remember me telling you that if you were late on the bus, you'd have to get on the microphone and sing for the bus!

After eating, we had about 5 minutes to look at the little market they had set up outside. I don't remember if I bought anything there or not, but it was nice to see what the local people were making to sell, little knickknacks and trinkets.
Then, we loaded back on the bus and headed back to Rome. We did our laundry at the facilities they had at the camping village. It's important to remember that not every place you stopped at had laundry facilities. That being said, when packing and buying clothing for your trip, remember that it could be a week in between laundry. So buy things that dry fast so you can hand wash them in the shower.

Later that night was toga night, where the camping village had a little party for us at the bar/restaurant area. I was totally exhausted, so I used this time to take a long hot shower and relax. Oh, after I wrapped the Mr. in our bed sheets! From everything I heard about the following day, that toga party was a huge success and most of the tour mates were looking like death warmed over the next day.... when we had an early wake up call.... because it was the day we toured Vatican City... yeah. It was exciting!
I can't wait to tell you all about Vatican City, stay tuned!



Oh, this is what Expat had to say about this day," You may want to take a day trip to Pompeii, famous for the destruction caused by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD in the old Roman City."










 Had to protect the tour mate's privacy, hence the smiley faces!











Sorry about the smiley faces. In no way is this funny, but I had to put something over the tour mate's faces to protect their privacy. This was a sobering part of the tour, where we actually saw the people casts.

Anyway, if you're ever in the area, please do yourself a favor and hire a local tour guide to tell you all of the info about Pompeii, it's worth every cent.





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