Day 2 Of Cruise - Naples, Italy
Well, we went to sleep in Rome and this morning we woke up in Naples. Ahhh...the joys of cruising, your hotel moves with you. Lael actually lived in Naples from 1991 to 1993 when he was in the Navy. Unfortunately, we were not able to see where Lael used to live or work, but we did get to see a couple of beautiful towns. This was also our introduction to the way shore excursions were handled on the ship. It basically consisted of arriving in the theatre at the prescribed time, getting your "Hey, look at me, I'm a tourist" sticker that identified which group of people you were going to tour with and waiting to leave the ship and board your tour bus, or in the case of Naples a Hydrofoil.
After leaving the ship, we met our guide who also had the nice broadcasting boxes that we had for the Vatican tour. We then boarded the hydrofoil for a a 50 minute ride to the island of Capri. From there we took a tram ride (Lael - It is also called a funicular) up to the main part of the town, Anacapri, where the guide took us to the Gardens of Caesar Augustus. Capri is a very picturesque town where the water is an unbelievable clear shade of blue. In fact there is a famous grotton on the island called the Blue Grotto for this very reason. Many famous people either vacation or have homes on the island, in fact we heard that Jude Law, Bionce, & Madaonna were in town. However we were in town too early to see any of these people. One of my goals is to have Gelato in every port we visit. In Capri I was able to have the hazelnut (Lael - Nocciola in Italian) version for the first time which turned out to be my favorite.
At about this point in time we recognized one of the drawbacks to cruising, especially when you take the tours from the ship. Each tour consists of about 40 - 50 people, and there are almost always more than one tour group for a particular tour. In addition there was more than one cruise ship in town. When we got to Capri there were probably 300 or more people invading for ships tours.
Once were done in Capri we boarded another hydrofoil for a short 25 minute trip to Sorrento. Once we got to Sorrento we visited an inlaid wood factory (one of the things that Sorrento is famous for) and were able to see how they make inlayed wood. It was an amazing process. What they do is to essentially cut out all of the pieces like a puzzle and the reconstruct the design together with all the different types of wood making up the different pieces. The inlay is then placed on the the object to have the inlay and covered with a polyester finish.
After listening to their presentation we had about an hour and a half to shop. We bought a couple of bottles of wine from a local open air market, an italian liquor called Limoncello, and some inlayed wood. Right before we left Sorrento we were taken to a local restaurant for lunch. It was good Italian food, however it was almost cafeteria style since there were about 150 people from about three groups at the restaurant. After this we had about 1/2 an hour before leaving for our next stop which was Pompeii.
In order to get to Pompeii we boarded a bus and drove down the Amalfi coast for about 45 minutes. We were able to tour Pompeii for about an hour and half. It was amazing to see how much of the system was able to survive. As they were excavating they found voids. The original archaeologist realized that these were objects that were covered in the ash and then burned. He realized that he could fill the voids with plaster to obtain impressions the burned objects (including people and animals). The whole city is only about 2/3 uncovered and they are still working on the rest of it. It was amazing how much of their art work that was preserved. The only things that did not survive were anything organic (people, animals, plants, & any lumber used in construction). 
The colors in the art work are so vibrant and the homes that couldn't have their own garden would end up painting them on their walls in amazing detail. One thing to know is that Pompeii is not the first city that was found but it was the first that hadn't been built over. Herculanium is the first city that was found and it is approximately 10 miles from Pompeii, however it had been built over by modern buildings. They did tell us that the main reason that most people didn't make it out of Pompeii was because of the ash in the air it was too hot and would burn their lungs.
The thing that all of you have to understand about this day was that all three areas took us 10 hours to do and this was considered one of the hardest excursions for the whole cruise! (Christie - OMG...my feet were killing me!!!!!!) We did manage to make it to dinner on the ship. We also wanted to go to a show that was put on at 10:45 pm but we were asleep from 3 days of go go go.
Capri
Sorrento
Pompeii
Back to Main Page
After leaving the ship, we met our guide who also had the nice broadcasting boxes that we had for the Vatican tour. We then boarded the hydrofoil for a a 50 minute ride to the island of Capri. From there we took a tram ride (Lael - It is also called a funicular) up to the main part of the town, Anacapri, where the guide took us to the Gardens of Caesar Augustus. Capri is a very picturesque town where the water is an unbelievable clear shade of blue. In fact there is a famous grotton on the island called the Blue Grotto for this very reason. Many famous people either vacation or have homes on the island, in fact we heard that Jude Law, Bionce, & Madaonna were in town. However we were in town too early to see any of these people. One of my goals is to have Gelato in every port we visit. In Capri I was able to have the hazelnut (Lael - Nocciola in Italian) version for the first time which turned out to be my favorite.
