Toussaint Travels: Pompeii, Caserta, and Naples

Hey!

I'm really behind, as always. Still recounting what happened nearly a month ago, but I will catch up, someday soon.

Okay, so after the first weekend in France, I went to go visit one of my old roommates and friends from Cal, Ruby, and her boyfriend, Nazio! Ruby is/was living in Naples doing an internship and she left me with an open offer to come stay with her anytime I wanted. (And now, she is coming to visit me this weekend. It's so nice to have friends abroad.)

Anyways, I spent three full days in Italy and two half-days in various forms of transport. The first day I traveled as follows:

Toulon (France) --> train --> Nice (France) --> walk --> Nice airport --> plane --> Rome airport (Italy) -->shuttle train --> Rome Termini (train station) --> regional train --> Naples Centrale (train station) --> taxi --> Ruby and Nazio's apartment.

All of this took around 11 hours. Yup. When I said I was tired of traveling, I wasn't kidding.

The next day, Ruby had to work because it was a Friday so Nazio and I took a regional train about 45 minutes to Pompeii. I actually had no idea that Naples and Pompeii were so incredibly close. The scenery on the train was nice; it was definitely different from France and very much what I expected from Italy. That evening Ruby and I walked around the main shopping area of Naples. It was bustling even at 8 pm. Then we made pasta for dinner and went to bed. Here are some pictures!

Plane time

Arrival in Naples!

Fresh fish in the streets of Naples

Pompeii!

Ruins of Pompeii

The Forum of Pompeii

A fireplace in a house in Pompeii

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It was crazy how many houses there were.

Counter of a restaurant (food would be inside the holes!)

Streets of Pompeii

Overheard a woman saying the the lower parts used to be an open-air sewer?

Remains from Pompeii

Another restaurant!

People would eat in the back part of the restaurant (sometimes they would lie down in the Greek style)

Coliseum

I'm small in comparison

The most chilling part were the casts of those who perished in the eruption of Vesuvius

There's Mount Vesuvius (I think it's still active!)

The next day we took the train to Caserta, where there is a huge palace, made for the Bourbon king of Naples. Here are some pictures. It was really beautiful and relaxing :) I felt like I could just ride my bike around it all day.

The photos all got kind of stuck together, hope you can still see them!

That evening we got pizza in a cooler neighborhood and looked down on a nice view of Mount Vesuvius.



Fun fact: In Italian, peperoni means red pepper not pepperoni!

Last Day! We stayed in Naples and just took a long walk around town, then went to dinner at a pasta place.