Naples and Pompeii, Italy, April 16th, 2023

We took public transportation from Naples to Pompeii as planned. It seems that public transportation here has largely been privatized. There are at least half a dozen bus companies and half a dozen railway companies. Typically, these companies are responsible for specific routes, and they all have their own tickets and passes. Accordingly, it was a challenge to catch the right ticket and the right train. To make matters worse, the trains and buses are in a miserable state, loud and rickety.

As you can easily see in the photos, it was raining consistently, and it was cold at 14°C. It was lightly raining in the morning, but it was pouring in the afternoon. By the time we got back to the ship, we were completely soaked.

Pompeii is an experience, as expected. It's not so much the fact that a volcano suddenly wiped out life here. It's more the fact that everything has remained in the same state as it was back then. Nothing has been further used, repurposed, burnt down, or destroyed. There are no epochs beyond the time of the volcanic eruption. Everything that's there is in the right context.

Even the size of Pompeii is impressive. For example, there's not just one theater, but a quarter with various differently-sized theaters. The houses on the outskirts of the city have larger, designed gardens. But even in the center, all larger houses have at least a small pond, some with water features, and some with actual water systems.

The preserved interiors are also sensational. Fantastic marble floors with beautiful patterns and images, wall and ceiling frescoes as paintings, pseudomarble, wallpaper-like patterns, etc.

The body casts of people who were trying to escape, as well as individual graffiti on house walls, show how life was abruptly ended.

Although there was still much more to see, we were mentally exhausted after 3 1/2 hours. So we returned to Naples, where we ate a pizza in the city of pizzas. Maria wanted to go back to the ship. I walked through the old town, visited various old buildings, and eventually took the tram back to the ship.

There are buses, trams, and a metro in Naples. However, their schedule is quite loose, usually every 30 minutes, and some lines are not operational on Sundays. That means you often have to wait quite a while. It's not surprising, therefore, that cars are the most important mode of transportation, and there are still many small gas stations along the roadside. On the other hand, I didn't see any charging stations.

In Naples, there are a few wealthy neighborhoods with quite pretty, well-preserved houses and relatively little trash on the streets. However, the majority of houses are in a poor condition, with crumbling facades, missing decorations, black walls, and balconies on the verge of collapsing. There's a lot of trash on the streets, including small trash mountains. A woman and a man even tried to steal from me, but they didn't succeed.

On the ship, it was time to warm up, meaning taking a hot shower or going to the sauna. We have already set sail towards Lisbon. We will be at sea for three days until we reach Lisbon. There, we will visit a project that Maria volunteers for.