Well, well- Pompeii. What a day trip this was! I thought it would be a great idea to see this famous Italian city while in the country, so we squeezed it in to our itinerary. The info guy made it seem easy enough- he told us which train to take to Napoli (Naples) and then from there, since there are no direct trains to Pompeii, we had to get on a metro....I think in the end, the city of Pompeii was worth all of what we went thru that whole day (I took over 60 pictures!), so I'll begin my story:
The sun rose bright and warm on this fateful day in southern Italy... (ok, I'm done with that style of story telling). We got up and busted out to breakfast, which was pretty amazing, as a matter of fact. We boarded our Napoli-ian train, no problems and enjoyed our 2 hour ride there. We found our way to the public transport system and then things got crazy. 
We went up to the ticket booth and asked the guy which ticket to buy to get to Pompeii. The man spoke very poor English and we spoke no Italian (this was a problem). He asked if we wanted one way tickets and I responded, no we want return tickets (to save us the hassel of buying more ticktes on the way back.) Ok, he said, 9 euros. I paused for a moment then gave him my 9 euros and he handed me two 4.50 euro tickets for the subway thing. Super! I thought. Sarah also gave the man 9 euros and waited for her tickets. Which the man didn't give her. Sarah calmly inquired if she could also have her tickets. He pointed to mine and said, no, those are yours. At this point, we were confused but also flustered, so (looking back I see I stupidly) and with out question, gave Sarah one of my tickets. We thought something was weird about that transaction and it was only later that we realized that THAT MAN CHARGED US BOTH DOUBLE! And probably pocketed 9 euros. Evil Italian subway man...
We were like, whatever, let's just get to Pompeii, shall we? So we went thru the turnstile thing (Sarah saw one that was broken or something and was just open, so she and about a million other people went thru that one) and got down to the subway place... and realized that there were NO maps or signs whatsoever. Right before the turnstile there was a map telling us which line to go on, but once pass the turnstile, when that information would be useful, there were no maps and no signs. And 4 lines of subway train things.
After asking several unhelpful people, we finally spoke to some Canadians who were going the same way and we got on a train. Which was the wrong one. But some guy was nice enough to help us out and tell us which place to switch at, so eventually we arrived at Pompeii.This is how we felt trying to get there -->
So, as you can see from some of my pictures above, it was a really cool place. We spent the whole day there and could have spent more time, because it was absolutely huge. We probably didn't even go thru half of it, either!
A lot of it was the same thing, over and over; doorways, columns, walls and piles of rubble. At the very end, as we were trying to find our way out, we passed an enormous collection of all the stuff they unearthed. Most of it was huge jugs. We listened in to a little tour group as they talked about... the 3 plaster cast bodies! (These people were covered with ash from the volcano erruption.) It was creepy and surreal to see them- there was a sleeping man, a pregnant woman and a guy sitting with his hands over his nose and mouth. They didn't have any features, like ears or noses, and their hands and feet were like blocks. It was very, very weird!
Then, the Necklace Incident occurred (it's the entry below. It's a mini epic story that I thought deserved it's own post).
We got safely back to the central train station, got some dinner and then were kicked out of our seats on board by a frantic American woman (there was about 6 of them traveling together and she was loudly complaining that she thought it was ridiculous that even tho they booked their seats together, they were scattered throughout the carriage). We found a compartment with 6 seats in it, so we just sat there instead and had a pleasant ride back to Rome.
So I guess I would recommend to anyone who wants to visit Pompeii, do your research beforehand so you don't get ripped off and/or lost and avoid the necklace lady at all costs. Unless you really want a Vesuvius volcanic rock necklace.
