Day 12: Cava de' Tirreni to Brindisi

Day 12: Cava de' Tirreni to Brindisi and the ferry

We were up and at 'em first thing to beat the heat to Pompeii.
We've done almost all of our breakfasts on our own, with fruit and bread and milk/yoghurt or cereal and milk and fruit, or oatmeal! This has greatly reduced the cost of eating on the trip. We packed most of the dry/non-perishables with us in the storage compartments on the FamVan.

We arrived at Pompeii before the park opened, but found the markings for where to go were fairly poor, so we parked about 1/4 mile from the entrance to the site.
Pompeii was awesome. Really incredible- the amount of detail still present to give insight into the way of life 2000 years ago was really awesome- definately captured our attention, and the boys were engaged for a lot of it, too. This is a place we would definately return to see, given the chance. And for kids it's great, because they can run and roam most of it.  Bek forgot to put a battery in her camera before we made the drive here, so these are iPad picks and she says it's painful to look at them because of the lack of quality.  

The preservation of the buildings, art, etc was incredible- definitely a nice augment to Rome and it's ruins.

This summer there is a special exhibit of the plaster casts of body imprints. Gruesome and awesome and a reminder of the temporal nature of our lives.

A bedroom in a mansion in Pompeii- just scoping vintage paint schemes for our next place.

In the public baths- the floor was suspended on these columns, allowing steam to be piped into the saunas.

The house of the ship Europa, so named because of the graffiti of the Europa on the wall.
Judah looking dejected about drawing on the walls, one of his favorite pastimes.

2500 year old crosswalks in the Pompeii streets.

Pompeii snack bars!  No one ate lunch at home- these little shops would have pots of food in the indents.

95 degrees, 2 hours of walking, and still smiling!

After Pompeii we jetted back to Cava de' Tirreni, ate lunch in the apartment, packed up and hit the road. We drove across the Italian Peninsula to the port town of Brindisi. On this drive we encountered very little traffic, and the hottest temps of the trip so far- 107F! In Brindisi we boarded the ferry on Grimaldi Lines(apparently pronounced budget cattle-car Lines in the Italiano) for Greece.

More on the ferry in the next post. It really deserved it's own dedicated bit.

My favorite part of the day was driving large swaths of Italian highway, 4 lanes, 80mph speed limits, WITH NO LANE MARKINGS. It was awesome. Aaaaaand, I honeybadgered the junk out of it.

Yep, this is a 130kph four lane highway. Just use your imagination for the lane markings...