The Bartulla Way: Part 2, Naples Italy

Let me first start by saying that the negative thing about sailing the Mediterranean is that it is kind of a rough sea. So even on a massive cruise ship........you feel the boat rocking. Just wanted to get that out there! So the plus side to that is that the ports are so close together that you only spend one full day at sea going and the rest of the time you are only at sea from about 7pm at night until about 7am in the morning, at the latest. Kind of helps with the rocking of the boat but you do have some serious sealegs when you return to shore.

First day on the cruise ship was at sea. We sailed from Barcelona all the way to Naples, Italy, which is "right above the ankle of the boot" as the tour guide in Naples informed us. We had a fun day at sea and the weather was perfect. Spent some time in the sun sipping beer, and I spent a little time in the spa getting a little pampering. Our ship had come all the way from Galveston, Texas. In the off months it's the ship that sails from Galveston down to the Caribbean and then in the summer months it sails across to Barcelona and then makes the weekly trip through the Mediterranean until November, then it returns to Galveston again. And there were actually people on the boat that had sailed over from Galveston and then spent a week on the cruise with us to Italy. I love cruising, but that's a little long for me!

So the second day we arrived in Naples and Jeff and I had an early start. The cruise ships dock in very industrial areas. So at first glance it's not a pretty place when you get off the boat. But thankfully the tour buses take you off to the pretty parts of Italy and you get to see the picturistic places you see in the movies and in photos. Let me first say our tour good was really great. She was Italian (of course) and she has the classic Italian voice. She was really a pleasure to have as our tour guide. So our excursion was off to Almalfi to start. To get there we had to take a small boat ride about 45 minutes away along the coast.

The coast headed to Almalfi

Almalfi Italy

Unfortunately the weather in Naples wasn't great and so the water was really choppy and it made for an extra long choppy boat ride! When we got to Almalfi the waves were so bad that it took 4 guys holding down the plank and people running across. NOT the highlight of the tour. But we walked along the streets of Almalfi. A little quaint village with just your typical Italian look. We got a brief tour from the guide and then free time. Jeff and I found a nice little bakery and had some real Italian pastries and a cappuccino. It was really good.

Our pastries from a little cafe in Almalfi

The streets of Almalfi where we had pastries and coffee

So after Almalfi we took the boat ride back and then we took a guided tour to Pompeii. Wow! I guess in my mind I always thought Pompeii was this small little village. But it's huge! I couldn't even begin to take enough pictures of how big it was or the amount they have excavated since the volcano covered the village in ash. There was a house that was still in tact enough that they could go in and see the detail of the art and painting on the walls. And lots of mosaic flooring that some how managed to survive the volcano.

One of the many walls in the house that is still standing and the paintings that survived the volcanic ash

Mosaic flooring at Pompeii

A small part of Pompeii's market square with the volcano in the background that erupted and buried in ash

So the creepy part of Pompeii for me is that as they were excavating they came across places where people had died under the ash. They were able to pour casting (concrete) into these places and get real castings of the way the people laid as the ash covered them. Sad in ways and at the same time it puts a real feel on how traumatic and scary it must have been. It makes me wonder why people would want to live around a volcano. The tour guide said that for a lot of those people it's their land, all they have known and it's land that's been passed down through generations. Still, seems so scary that it could erupt again and they could lose so much, possibly their lives.

One of the several castings they had. This is one of the more pleasant ones. I couldn't bare to take pictures of some of the ones that were not so "peaceful"