Pompeii & Friends

Yesterday, we trained up to Pompeii to check out the ruins. We weren't expecting such a large and well preserved city. It was amazing! Walking down the small streets with largely intact buildings on both sides, you could really get a great sense for what this place was like 2000 years ago. Many of the houses and shops were in great condition with paintings still on the wall. There were also a couple of theatres and a mini-coliseum that were in much better shape than the ruins in Rome. There was also some surviving marble which was neat. We spent over 3 hours touring the site and still didn't get to everything. Again, there were plenty of well behaved independent puppies roaming around and benefiting from the generosity of the tourists. Some people were petting them, but we're sure they are regretting that now that they probably have fleas.

We headed back to Sorrento for a late lunch and our customary afternoon nap. But as we were walking through town, we heard someone calling Tom's name. It turned out it was one of our friends from college, Adam!! He and his wife, Danielle, were spending a week in Italy. Tom hadn't seen him in about 2 years and April hadn't seen him in 7 years. We spent a while chatting in the street and decided to hook up later for dinner. We had dinner at a seafood restaurant in the marina and had a great time. It was a nice change of pace from our usual solitary meals.

Our dinner neighbor tried to get us to order whitebait, which sounded like some sort of sardinnes, but we all balked. When our dinner came and he saw we didn't order them, he was pretty sad, because we think he wanted to have some. April offered him some calamari but he really had his heart set on the whitebait.

Today we trained up to Lucca (about an hour west of Florence). At the train station in Napoli, we tried to buy some snacks for the ride, when it was brought to our attention that we were trying to pass a counterfeit 20!! We think it was from the change we got at lunch on Saturday at the Fauno Bar (do not go there!). So now we have a useless fake 20 - thank god it wasn't a 100.

Tomorrow we are all set to rent some bikes and head out to Pisa and beyond. We checked and there are 2 bike shops next to each other and they both rent road bikes so we are all set.