A Herculean Effort

Worries from home made it doubtful whether we were up to a big excursion today. We decided to give it a go and to stay flexible. Bus H took us to Roma Termini and we caught the Frecciarossa to Naples. Lyn bought us breakfast on the train. Naples Centrale was bedlam. The transport hub for several tourist hotspots, the wonder is not that it doesn't function well, rather, the wonder is that it works at all.

The most notable improvements since 2013 are automatic gates which validate your tickets and the disappearance of graffiti from the Circumvesuviana trains. 

Our train was mostly populated by tourists hoping to go to Pompeii or Herculaneum. The lack of signage meant there was an audible collective sigh of relief when our train headed in the right direction.

Herculaneum manages to be more impactful than Pompeii because your first sight of the ruins is to look down on them. We took it slow but the heat was enervating. I didn't need to see everything as I no longer have students.

By lunchtime we were back on the train for Naples where we grabbed a Margherita pizza in a station cafe. We gave up on the idea of the Metro and grabbed a taxi to the National Archaeological Museum. Our first view of Naples confirmed the stereotype: grimy, run down, crowded and crazy drivers. It made Rome look like Switzerland! It was fun.

The museum was full of inadequately explained masterpieces. Basically there are two knockout sections. The Farnese sculptures are too numerous to appreciate. What is Joe Public meant to make of an exhausted looking Hercules or Septimius Severus' perfect buttocks? The stuff from the cities of Vesuvius is amazing but not adequately explained. Mosaics go on floors, not walls. Frescoes are not meant to be in frames.

The taxi ride back to the station was grand entertainment. A traffic accident led to a Neapolitan traffic snarl and a symphony of horns. We wouldn't have missed it for the world.

At the station hundreds of waiting passengers competed for a handful of seats. Beggars asked for "1 Euro". We tried a suppli. 

The train took us back to Rome at 280 kmh. At Roma Termini, nobody seems to have told the crowds that Bus H to Trastavere wasn't running. We took bus 65 instead. Packed like anchovies, every time a passenger tried to validate a ticket the machine exploded into frenzied beeping. Ultimately Lyn and I burst out laughing and another gentleman conducted the "music".  It took longer to get from Roma Termini to Trastavere than it took to travel from Naples to Rome!

Finally, we walked the last kilometre and then stopped to eat pasta and drink a spritz. 

Like Hercules, we were exhausted from our labours but feeling a little heroic.