Rome Honeymoon – Day 3

After a busy first full day in Rome, today was about to get busier! I have always wanted to go to Pompeii but thought it was miles from Rome. When I found out you can do a day trip there, I had to get us some tickets. I am very thankful to everyone that donated to our honeymoon fund at the wedding, the generosity of our friends and family meant that we had a bit of extra money to book excursions and things that we could only dream of doing. Due to the time of year, this actually included a visit to Naples instead of Mt. Vesuvius, which suited me just fine as I don’t think I fancied a long climb/walk up a volcano!

A 7:30am start meant getting up early for us as the meeting point was about half an hour from our apartment on public transport. Luckily the buses and metro start really early so we didn’t have any problems planning out routes and I wrote down the names of all the stops we needed to take before we went. We left in plenty of time just in case there was cancellations or no bus came and we had to walk but we still managed to be late as the metro station was closed. We couldn't actually find the meeting point. We literally ran from the metro and still didn't know where we were going. Google maps was rubbish. James called the tour operator and the lady on the phone directed us to the office. We got in and showed our ticket. At this point we were 20 minutes late. They spoke in Italian to each other and looked at their watches concerned. Thankfully the bus was still waiting as another family was running late. We got dropped off at the coach and got on (it was packed as everyone was waiting for us) but I am so thankful we got on or I would have been devastated!

The tour began with a coach journey to Naples. We got to stop off at Naples Bay and it was beautiful. I would love to come back to Italy and stay this side one day. We then made our way to Pompeii, it took just over 3 hours. When we arrived in Pompeii we were treated to a pizza lunch before starting our tour. We then made our way to the ruins and another tour guide took over from there.

Pompeii was absolutely massive, you would need a whole day to properly look around the ruins here and I'd love to come back. It's very eerie seeing the ruins and then seeing Mt. Vesuvius leering over you in the background thinking it could technically erupt at any given moment. We had around 2 hours in Pompeii to explore with our guide. He really brought Pompeii to life, if we were here alone we wouldn't have really known what we were looking at but it was great to see what used to be shops, homes and even a brothel.

I found it fascinating that you could even see marks in the road where the chariots used to drive, over many years they have left lines in the road. It was great to see all this preserved history.

After a long day we headed back to our apartment, we grabbed a takeaway from a local place called Mama Eats and took it back to the apartment to eat. We then went to bed ready for another day.