Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 4 - Friday May 13th 2016 - Naples, Italy

So the alarm went off at 0630, hardly what you would call a holiday wake up call. It was a quickish shower and shave and breakfast before lining up at the port entrance for our organised coach trip to see some of the sights of Naples and the surrounding areas.

Now organised coach trips really are not our thing but sometimes you just have to give into them when you want to see as much as you can in a short space of time.

As you would expect you stood around waiting for the late comers to arrive before you set off, people choosing to ignore the advised meet up time, the grumpy old man in me always finds things like this really get to me and I just find it rude but what can you do? May be I just need to learn to chill.
Let’s be polite and say that the average age of the people on this trip with us was certainly older than us.

In a way though that was a life lesson and one that we are lucky enough to observe and take heed from. It’s a cruel life when you reach a certain age and you get to travel and see and soak up different places, histories and cultures only to find that the mind may want to but the body just can’t handle it anymore. This was the situation with many of our fellow day-trippers. On arriving at the gates of the town of Pompeii it was sad to see so many walk straight to the coffee shop or souvenir stalls that lined the road as they could just not manage the slight incline in the road or the very mild heat……at some point when they booked this trip the mind must have said that they could but now faced with the reality it was not for them. We are indeed very lucky to be able to do this all now whilst the body and the mind still says yes.

So the first stop on our journey today was the ancient town of Pompeii, the excavated ruins that were covered in volcanic ash following on from the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. With 35% of the town still covered in ash as it was, the town is still huge and our two hour tour did not really cover everything about this world UNESCO heritage site but you got more than a good flavour of it all and the terrific sadness that took place here. History always seems so much more interesting when it is both interactive and real. This is a real town with streets and houses and shops and public squares and baths and basilicas. It just means so much more than looking at things in glass cases in sanitised marble corridors in a museum.

We walked the basalt stone avenues, saw the shops of the traders, the bakers, the wine stores the baths the frescos, the incredible mosaic floors of private residences whilst being blown away by the sheer scale of the tragedy and size of the town itself.

By far the most harrowing and disturbing relic is that of the plaster cast forms of the people who were burned and buried in the city as the volcano engulfed them, their bodies preserved in the ash creating hollows that were filled with plaster then carefully excavated. These bodies or casts showed every flaw and painfully the dying expressions of those unable to get out. Faces of people dying their skin burnt off them by flying fireballs, piercing their skin….shocking and tragic.

Leaving Pompeii and back on board the coach with our motley crew for the day we headed up the coast road to Sorrento and Posittano. Now Italians have style in clothes, in food but their style of driving is one style. Fast furious and dangerous and relentless.

Now mix this style of driving with some of the windiest cliff hanging roads in the world and you get the picture. There were points along this drive overlooking the bay of Naples to Sorrento and beyond that were both breath-taking in terms of scenery but also gut wrenching in terms of twisting and turning and the passing coaches and lorries coming within a hair strands distance of each other.

The landscape is a mix of limestone mountain ranges covered head to toe in olive trees and umbrella pine trees so called as they only open up at the top to create natures version of an umbrella. Vertical cliffs drop straight into the sea with no beaches at their base. The architecture is punctured by romantic renaissance buildings mainly churches and steeples, symbols of the churches wealth. Terracotta stone buildings rise from the fertile soil all edged by the Mediterranean. If you ever feel like a road trip put this road on your list of must do’s, it will be worth it.

After a couple of hours on the coach on this road we were glad to stretch the legs and get off in Sorrento and eat some traditional Pizza in a picture postcard restaurant on the side of yet another winding road in the town, it also had the benefit of actually being quite reasonable priced as well.

Fed and watered we walked the town, it’s just what you want it to be. Terribly stylish and oozing five star quality like then many many hotels in the town. Jet foils head out to the isle of Capri from here and the harbour has playboy boats and super yachts. Again there are no natural beaches to speak of but floating pontoons make for sunbathing areas, champagne bars and seafood restaurants.

It was soon time to brace the Italian roads again and head back to Naples and our floating home. We made the journey in a little over an hour and as before we were glad to get off. The great thing about these trips especially in Pompeii is that the guide really does help to bring the history of the place alive and without that it would have been quite flat so we were both glad that we booked the trip and took in that history. Pompeii was worth it alone.

Back on board we had coffee and after a quick change we were down at the Schooner Bar for a pre-dinner aperitif. Our choice of tipple, an espresso martini each with baileys Irish cream…..perfect.

Dinner tonight was back in the Silk fusion restaurant but with a different menu as they rotate them over the course of the cruise. We were both feeling quite tired but we went for a drink in the Schooner after dinner then went back to the Bionic Bar for the meeting at 22:15. Martin & Michael were there again but this time we were joined by two more people from Perth in Australia who got on the cruise in Southampton and an American Guy that we could not understand at all (it was not just us). Fighting back the yawns we gave in and headed for our pit……thank goodness it’s a sea day tomorrow!