theatre of the absurd: Italy, part IV

Starting off this entry with a not-so-relevant rant, but for the first time in ages, the truth of spending too much time on the Internet being detrimental to your psychological well being, really hit home for me. (I know, I know..) I feel like the posts I've been seeing today on my feed have been particularly vicious and negative. Needed to get that off my chest.

The weather that day in Naples and the wider Campania region was so beautiful it would have broken your heart: the sky was the colour of speedwells and was almost completely clear, and it was beginning to border on hot. I remember feeling privately grateful that I had the presence of mind to visit during the winter, rather than peak season.

I'd had a very nice chat that lasted well into the night with a bunch of English guys about a year younger than me, and a Dutch guy in his early thirties who had an early plane to catch back to NL the next morning. The English guys were planning to go to Pompeii the next morning, as I was, and invited me to go with them. I said that would be nice. In any case, I got up at about 6 the next morning as I wanted an early start. I bumped into the Dutch guy and some of his friends eating breakfast, which was slightly awkward as I wasn't properly awake at that point and wanted some Quiet Time to myself. I grabbed a table as far from them as possible and sat down with some cereal and yoghurt, and read the news and caught up with texts. The English guys still hadn't shown up, and I didn't want to waste daylight waiting around for them - in fact this is probably one of the silliest things one can do whilst travelling, I should think - so I decided to go on ahead without them, and enjoyed a nice leisurely walk to the metro station, and then on to Garibaldi, and from there, the admittedly slightly cramped ride to Pompeii which lasted about 90 minutes. The train was rammed and I had a guy's backpack right in front of my nose until his girlfriend noticed and made him take it off, which I appreciated. I was still in my 'zone' at that point and just couldn't be bothered to throw a fit and tell him to get his darned backpack out of my face. When you're on holiday, you usually try not to sweat the small things, unless they're really intolerable.

Anyway, the train turned a corner, and then Vesuvius reared up at us, imposing, majestic and deadly, and everyone in the train turned and beheld the volcano with a kind of silent wonder. Most of all, I was awestruck by its sheer size, and I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a delicious tremour of fear running down my spine when I looked upon its great grey magnificence, and thought of how swiftly and mercilessly it had brought death to so many people. It was immense and truly a monster of nature, and I know the same thing was on everyone's minds, regardless of how many times they had visited Pompeii and where their destination was.

My first view of Vesuvius! The photo's not too good because we were on a moving train and I didn't have a window seat, not to mention the windows were extremely dirty, but it's a moment worth remembering.

I got off at Pompei Scavi train station, along with about 95 percent of the other passengers. And to think this is low season. I can't fathom what high season must look like. I walked along with the flow and found myself at the main entrance, bumped into the English guys and said hi to them placidly, and we proceeded to buy our tickets.