Getting to Pompei

Up early for the train from Termini to Tiburtina, transfer to the bus station and on the bus. This was a sentence written without much turmoil. On the day however, everything was pretty easy until we got to the bus station, only to be met with chaos. It was bound to happen since I am sure I had only uttered the day before that the train and bus network in France and Italy had worked like clockwork, down to the minute just about. We arrived at the bus station at least an hour ahead of schedule, where there was absolutely no indication of what to do next. A line of angry people were lined up at the "ticket office" (although perhaps they were not angry, just speaking in dramatic Italian). One guy did dare to queue jump, at which time there was a bit of anger directed at him - that much can be deduced without the need to understand the language.

It would appear the board which told you which platform you had to go to was broken, and with only one girl working the counter (despite another man standing around behind her doing what looked like "nothing"), she didn't really care to help people. To be fair, she may have just been sick of being yelled at about the broken billboard despite it only being 7.30am.

So the only way to know which bus you had to get on, was to stand around, wait for one of your bus company's buses to pull in, rush to the bay to see if that was yours, and bravo if it was. So, that is exactly what we did. Bit of a trial run for tomorrow because we are going to be back here to catch the same bus company to Siena.

The bus journey was great and we drove past Vesuvius and through Naples. That was an eye-opener! Imagine scouting for a post-apocalyptic movie location - do yourself a favour and go to Naples - will save heaps of time! Graffiti, overgrown, run-down, neglected, slums, rubbish everywhere, mafia-controlled, barely habitable...Read more