Making our way from Rome to Pompeii and down to Sorrento

After 4 days in Rome, we boarded the high speed rail down to Naples, and from there got on the Circumvesuviana line (a clunker of a train, covered in graffiti - see pic) down to the Pompeii Scavi stop. Our plan was to visit Pompeii, then catch the bus up to Mt. Vesuvius in the afternoon. After having the worst food we had in Italy (outside the entrance to Pompeii, what should we expect), we made our way through the ruins for about 2 hours, using the rented audioguides and the Rick Steves Pompeii Walk that we printed off the internet.

Most of the artifacts are now in the archaeological museum in Naples, but they do still have a couple of the plaster casts at the site (see pic).

We didn't see a whole lot of tourists until we got to the brothel - which was teeming with giggling Japanese travelers. See the picture of one of the brothel "bedrooms" - comfy, eh?

When we finished at Pompeii, we went to catch the bus to Vesuvius only to find that the one bus of the day had just left (this seemed to be the theme of our next few days of traveling!) - apparently in the "off season" a lot of the transit shuts down. (We actually came to wish we had rented a car for this part of our trip.) So we got back on the Circumvesuviana and headed further south to Sorrento, where we waited a couple hours until we could check into our B&B, which was hidden in a grove of citrus trees - these trees also line the streets of the city. Once we got checked into our room, Brian promptly managed to cut power to the whole B&B by putting the heater on turbo mode - whoops! That evening we ventured out to the main square in town, and just happened to catch the Sorrento tree lighting (see pic), which consisted of Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me" being played on repeat for about 15 times in a row before the tree was lit. No Christmas music or anything. The Italians started cussing every time the song would start again, and it was good to see that despite the language barrier and cultural differences, we all shared a universal hatred of Randy Newman music.