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  • Day 53

    The city lives on...Pompeii

    May 23, 2019 in Italy ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    We’ve decided that Naples isn’t for us, and that climbing Mt Vesuvius on a hot day is unfair on Amelia, we can see it really well and wrk is Pompeii will be really interesting.

    We can park right next to the entrance and decide to take the pushchair for Coen...about 3 minutes in we realise this is not going to work with the huge cobble stone streets - the deepest gaps between each large cobble stone meaning you can get 5 metres in about 30 minutes! Nic runs back to get the back pack and we roam through the old city.

    It’s busy but we imagine a place like this is busy EVERY day. With the tickets we got a really good guide book telling us about each area of th town and what here is to see in each place. The full city tour would take about 8hrs, so we highlight the bits we really want to see and wander through. It really is amazing to see this place, preserved so well, with some really recent discoveries too. To see exactly how people used to live almost 2000 years ago, the buildings they used to live, work and play in, the stunning amphitheatre (famous for its Pink Floyd concert/film), and the casts of the people who died trying to escape is beyond amazing.

    All is going well and Amelia is just about finding enough shade down the long straight cobbled streets, we’ve bought enough snacks to get them back, but as I (Sarah) turn a corner my foot wedges down one of the cobble holes and I twist my ankle pretty badly. Some lovely English men stop to help and offer to half carry me back to the entrance, but I decide (through embarrassment) that I can hobble. When we get to be main square we see some paramedics and decide to ask for some ice to help the pain, they speak no English but more embarrassingly decide to half carry (half drag!) me through the busy main square to their first aid room, where they wrap my ankle in a compression and offer me an injection in my bum (I decline due to the lack of translation available, but accept the single paracetamol they offer instead).

    We get back to the van (a little slower than planned) grabbing a take away pizza on the way, and head off to do a (painful) food shop before deciding to see if we can make our next stop in one go. We plan to visit friends (Kat an Fabio) who are in Italy, so if the children make it through this long journey, we’ll get a few days of not much driving and they can see the other English children for an extra day.

    By the time we arrive, my ankle has fattened up, and the rain has set in, but luckily we are in good hands now and meet are friends at a lovely, most importantly, local pizza restaurant, where we order our first sample of truffles (which Coen LOVES!) and some other delish pasta, washed down with some kind of Italian liquor (to help the ankle of course!), and we meet some of Kat’s family and Amelia enjoys joining in with the children (English children at last, for real 4yr old conversation!)

    Kat and Fabio have also kindly arranged for us to stay in the hotel car park for as long as we stay with them, so we head back and find out their plans for the weekend...
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