Alex's Overseas Adventures: Herculaneum - overcoming language barriers

On Sunday morning we again headed to the Circumvesuviana train, this time not going quite as far along the line. We hopped off the train at Ercolano, and walked through the town, down the hill to the ruins of Herculaneum. What struck me as we were walking through the town was the sheer number of people just standing around on the streets talking to each other. I'm not sure if it was because it was a Sunday morning and it was after/before church, but there were a lot of people just hanging about!

We arrived at Herculaneum, and you instantly get a feel for how small it is, especially after Pompeii. It is set into a hillside (which of course was put there by the volcano eruption, and now holds the modern town). We walked down the hill to the main entrance, grabbed 2 audio guides and headed into the town.

We headed into the first building, which was the remains of a house. I found a small section of a mosaic floor which was sticking out of the ground. I bent over and took a photo, only to have one of the staff members come up to me and show me another piece protruding from the ground. He then proceeded to show me another piece and uncovered it more with his fingers. Then he let Scott and Lindsay know that he was going to show me something else by saying "photo, photo" and gesturing to them that they should wait. He led me behind a barrier and into a cave-like area which had a lovely example of a mosaic floor, as well as some stucco and the remains of a water pipe "aqua" sticking out of the wall.

For the next hour or so this delightful gentleman gave the three of us a tour of the site, all in Italian. Through my limited knowledge of French, Italian words that sounded like English or I recognised as being related to English (ah the beauty of Latin!!), and lots of sign language and miming, we learnt a great deal about life in Herculaneum. We found out his name was Pascal, and he really made our day. He was very entertaining, patient and kind. He also pointed out all the places for easy access for Lindsay "papa, papa". :-D

Our other find of the day was a ginger cat. As some of you may or may not know, I grew up with a ginger cat, so I have a soft spot for them. He was lovely and really really friendly. So friendly in fact that he followed us around for quite a while, and snuggled right into my neck, purring loudly and then promptly sucked on my shirt. Weird cat!! I miss having an animal to cuddle so it was lovely to have some feline attention. And it brought back a lot of memories to have ginger cat hair stuck to my clothes. :-)

After our "guided tour" and the cat, we left feeling very happy about our day there. We took the train away from Naples towards Sorrento and wandered the streets. Had a look at the view of the Bay of Naples and took some pictures, then headed back up to the town. We did a bit of window shopping, and followed the trend by wandering down the streets, in the middle of the road! I was astounded at just how many people were out and about. Scott and I have decided that we would like to go back to Sorrento, and to Pompeii of course!

Monday was our last day in Naples, so we decided to spend it in the city itself. We took the fernicular railway up to Castel St Elmo for the 360 degree views of the city. We were not disappointed! Naples was a little smoggy though. Then we headed down the hill using a different furnicular railway to just basically walk the streets and head back towards the hotel.

Naples is an interesting city. Not as aesthetically pleasing as other cities I have been in, but pleasant. It was lively with the markets on the street and the hustle and bustle. Clothes hung from every balcony.

We picked up our bags at the hotel and headed to the station. I took the bus to the airport for my flight back to London, while Scott and Lindsay took a train to Rome