Rome-Naples-Pompeii-Naples-Rome-Rimini, Italy Day 6

April 5, 2010

Day 6 Rome-Naples-Pompeii-Naples-Rome-Rimini, Italy

Today begins at 06:00.  We had to leave our hotel at this time to make it to our 06:45 train to Napoli (Naples).  The train ride was pretty uneventful, but very comfortable.  Once in Naples we had an interesting time trying to figure out where to go to take the train to Pompeii.  Thankfully, Trevor worked wonders as usual and got us onto the train we wanted.  A short ride got us into Pompeii and then it was a 15 min hike with our backpacks to get to the Pompeii Ruins.  We had planned to store our luggage in a storage locker at the train station, but there weren't any that we could see.  Luckily, there was an area at the Ruins.  The Pompeii Ruins are ruins after Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD (I think).  They were pretty incredible.  You could just imagine what the city looked like.  A really cool thing at the ruins was the plaster of paris casts of the victims.  Some of them had the bones!  You could see their facial expressions at the time of their death.  It was crazy.  After about 3 hours of walking around, we headed back to the train station to get on a train back into Napoli, where we grabbed a slice of pizza (it is, after all, where pizza was invented), booked another train (one of the one's you must reserve) then headed to the train to Rome.  This was a super speedy train.  It made your ears pop.  They even served us like in an airplane.  That was nice.  We got drinks and a snack.  When we had reached Rome, they even gave us an Easter egg chocolate on the way out!  Then it was off to catch our final train of the day, to Rimini.  The plan in Rimini was to visit one of Trevor's University friends, who just happened to be there at the same time, and to see if we could get to San Marino (another country to check off the list).  I decided I was too tired to care, and left Trevor to do some running around Rimini to see if he could manage to check off these two items.  After having a lovely late evening meal, I headed back to the hotel to read while Trevor went off.  Unfortunately nothing worked out.  At least we had a good hotel really close to the train station.  It was time to sleep before another crazy day.