Time to explore Italy
We arrived in Brindisi about 6:30 AM. The early morning was foggy, and we couldn't see much of the town from the ship. After walking to the terminal and going through customs, we walked to the bus stop at the port entry. It was over an hour until the first bus arrived, so we sat and talked about the different semi trucks driving by, and the kids played a little on our phones. We took our bus to our stop and walked from there to where we were staying just for a night. Luckily, the owners allowed us to check in very early. We put our stuff down and relaxed for a little while. I think I napped; I can't remember for sure.
Later in the day, we left to go to the store to get dinner and lunch for the following day. The hosts left us croissants which would be our breakfast. It was also a time of day to stroll around the town. The area and parts of town we saw were beautiful. We stopped at a bakery selling the most delicious tarallini, a small bread circle (like a large Cheerio) in many flavors. While we walked to a small town square to eat our snack, we happened upon a produce market that was closing for the day. We grabbed some fresh cherries and apples. The square was around the corner, and we sat on a bench and shared the goods. A museum was next to us; an archaeological site was underneath it, part of an ancient Roman neighborhood. We walked around it and then explored more of the narrow streets. Eventually, we made our way down to the waterfront. There was a wide walkway between the water and the buildings. It was a clear day, and the water looked gorgeous. There were some restaurants and stores along the walkway, and it would have been a great day to have dinner there.
We returned to our place, stopping at a grocery store along the way. Since we were only there one night, we picked up some pizzas for dinner and sandwich fixings for lunch the next day. When we returned to our place, Tanya and I did some planning while the kids had some screen time. I cooked our pizzas, and we had apples with them. If the ferry time had stayed the same, we would have arrived around 8:00 PM today and only had enough time to eat and go to bed. It was nice to have more time here. The stay was short, but it left a good impression.The next morning, we caught a bus at another bus stop for a longer leg of the trip. We got to the bus stop but needed to figure out what side of the street the bus would arrive. The only signs we saw for the bus we wanted, called Itabus, were lying on the sidewalk across the street. I thought there was supposed to be a sign on both sides, so I walked across, grabbed one, and stood it up by us. A few guys down the street were talking in front of a store and must have seen me. One drove up to inform us we should be waiting for our bus on the other side of the street. He knew as much English as I did Italian, so it took us a minute to understand. It was such a kind and helpful gesture. We crossed the street and waited for our next bus.
Since this ride would be 5.5 hours long, it was a much nicer double-decker bus with a bathroom and luggage storage. We were looking forward to seeing how this would go. The seating arrangement was two seats on either side of the aisle with five seats across the back. Tanya booked these seats for us so we could be together. As a bonus, we could put our carry-on bags in the space behind our seats and the back window. The seats were comfortable and reclined pretty far back. The kids are psyched because the bus has WiFi and the seats have power ports. The route for this bus starts where we are and goes all the way to Venice. It will make several stops along the way for people getting on and off. Only about twenty people got on here, so our youngest curled up and fell asleep on the two seats in front of us. She got a nice long nap before the people who purchased those seats got on.
Our final stop was Naples, and halfway there, we stopped at a convenience store along the highway for a twenty-minute break. The store had a counter with sandwiches and other things made that day, as well as different types of things you would find in a gas station-style store. We stretched our legs and used the restroom at the store since the one on the bus wasn't good. After the break, we loaded up and continued. It was nice seeing the Italian countryside and the many hilltop villages all over Italy. So many looked great to visit and do nothing more than walk around the town.
Cities in Italy are known for pickpockets, so when we arrive in Naples, we are on our guard. Tanya and I talked to the kids about being prepared, self-aware, and looking out for each other. My wife had read accounts of people's luggage getting stolen or attempting to be at bus stations when drivers start unloading it or when people are getting their own out. They will reach in gra,b a random piece, and try to make off with it. To be safe, I get one of my boys, and we go to the door while the bus pulls up so we can be the first off. Our luggage was loaded in last, so I was there when the driver opened the luggage hold. I handed bags to my son, and we waited for the rest of the family to join us. We have covers on all of our luggage and backpacks for further protection. It may stand out, but it's worth the peace of mind.
We walk to the main train/tram terminal next door to catch a metro tram to the neighborhood where we are staying. The agent told us to go to platform three when we bought tickets. We go down some stairs to get there and see three platforms and many people. Tanya and I start scanning around to ensure we are in the right place. We have the kids sit down, and immediately, a guy gets up from a bench and slowly makes his way over to us. We both see him and watch him closely. It seems obvious he's scouting us out. I'm watching him, and Tanya is watching the other guys he was with on the bench because they were talking when we walked up. I've made eye contact with this guy a few times, so he knows I'm aware of him. He meanders closer, and I stand up to put myself between him and the family. As he walks by, I walk next to him.
A train comes into view, and we get ready to board. It slows down but passes, so we must walk down the platform a short distance to where it stops. Again, this guy starts moving when we do, so I walk past the kids and stay shoulder-to-shoulder with him as they go by me. I glance from them back to him so he knows I'm not distracted or a target. We get on the tram and find seats, but he doesn't. When it pulls out of the station, Tanya and I start talking about him and how he seemed to be looking for an opening. I never felt in danger or scared, and making eye contact with people you suspect goes a long way to deter them. Tanya or I did it a couple of times earlier in the trip while in Greece if we questioned someone's intentions.
I ask Tanya the name of our stop a few stops down the line, and she tells me. There was a row of chairs between us, so she had to speak up. A couple of guys glanced from her to me, and I could tell they were thinking about something. One of the guys started to tell me something, but he didn't speak English. The other guy also tries, but I need help understanding what they are trying to tell me. Luckily, an American family is sitting near us, and one of the guys tries to ask if they can help. They have ridden the metro trains a few times and seem to understand what the other guys are trying to explain. The American group's father explains the different tram line names and their destinations to me. The other Italian guys were telling me this, but I didn't know the names of the lines, so I wasn't understanding that. He showed me a picture of the routes, and I realized we got on the wrong tram. That's what this whole thing was about. He told me what stop to get off so we could catch a train going the other way to our stop.
Taking the wrong train meant a longer time until we got to our place, but it wasn't so long that it ruined the day. We were so grateful for everyone's help on the tram. Thinking about how we got on the wrong one, I realized I never checked the monitors at the station once we were on the platform because I was watching that guy so much. The ticket agent told Tanya the wrong platform because we needed to go in the other direction. We could have discovered this by looking at the monitors and becoming familiar with the tram lines. Thus, we find out the pitfalls of travel. You have to roll with the mistakes you make and learn from them. Now, we are sure to have more information going into a station of any kind. Looking back, we wonder if we were supposed to get on the wrong one to avoid something happening with that suspicious guy on the correct tram. It could have been a much bigger blessing than an inconvenience.
We get off at the stop where we change trains and catch the right one. The lady we need to meet to show us our place lives near it, and we pass her home on the way there. This was lucky because we were running late due to the tram mix-up, and we don't have cell signal on our phones, which means we couldn't contact them to let them know. We met up, and she showed us our place. It's good that it's clean and comfortable because everything is in one big room. The description didn't say it was or wasn't, just that it had a queen bed, a single bed, and a pull-out couch with a kitchen and a bathroom, which was all we needed. We lay our bags down and rest from the travel of the day. It's mid-afternoon, and Tanya and I will go out to a grocery store soon for meals.
The next day, we catch the metro to Herculaneum. It's a short walk from the metro station to the site. Before we went in, we decided to have lunch. We didn't leave first thing in the morning, so the day didn't feel rushed due to our traveling fiasco the day before. I had to check my backpack at the visitor center because they didn't allow those in the site. Once we were in, it was quite the experience. Herculaneum was a vacation town mostly used for people to visit their second home seasonally. I love how we could walk into and through so many buildings and wonder how things were before the town was buried. Not all buildings were open for people to enter, but a lot was. There are more preserved interior portions here compared to Pompeii. Several homes or shops still had partial remains of mosaic floors, frescoes on the walls, and designs on the ceilings. We could have used an audio tour to look around but decided not to. The kids' attention spans wouldn't last that long anyway. We discovered that due to some large earthquakes, people quit going as much, fearing an eruption. So, when Mt Vesuvius erupted, many homes were already abandoned, and not many people were there.
Even though Herculaneum is a fraction of the size of Pompeii, there was still plenty to see and feel worn out afterward. The roads are made of huge, rounded stones, so you had to watch nearly every step if you couldn't walk next to it. Walking through a town with half or more of all the buildings missing made it challenging to know where one structure ended and another began. This was another reason I was grateful to be able to walk into buildings and understand what I was looking at. Our oldest walked through at his own pace, which was too quick, in my opinion, and found a shady spot at the museum to sit and read while he waited for us. The middle child explored more but also wanted to do it at his own pace. Our youngest stayed with my wife and I and began to get whiny after we were three-quarters of the way through. Children can be such fun. Somehow, she survived the rest of the time with us, and we found our boys resting in the shade. We did the same for a while. Our exploration took about three hours, and we were done, so we headed home.
Our destination for the next day was Pompeii. We started the day earlier this time since Pompeii was bigger and there would be more people. It was amazing how huge it was. Pompeii was indeed a small city, and they had shuttles to take you from one part to another if you wanted. One of the first things we saw when we walked in was a large town square with ruined Roman columns and a statue. This was a good indicator of the kind of city it used to be. After buying tickets, we grabbed a map and planned a few stops so we didn't wander around. On our way to our first stop, we found a house with a well-preserved mosaic floor and a little eatery with the marble counters still intact.
The first place we went was a hill that overlooked a section of the city that used to be a neighborhood. Close to this was a display with casts of bodies found in this area. On a couple, you could see part of their skulls. It was hard to tell if the people were small or young when they died, but nearly all the casts were small for adults. While looking at this display, we found out most of the population had fled the city because they could tell Mt Vesuvius would erupt. These people were probably poor and didn't have anywhere else to go or couldn't leave for some reason. Even though over 1,500 bodies were discovered, it was a small fraction of the overall population.
The next stop was the amphitheater. I didn't know Pompeii had one, and not only was it fully intact, but it is the oldest Roman amphitheater in existence. It didn't have the adornments that would have been there in Roman times, but structurally, it was complete. We could walk into the main entrance and go into the arena to look around at the seating area. Most of the stone for the seats was gone, but some remained to get an idea of what it would have looked like. After looking around, we left to find a shady spot for lunch. There were green areas outside the stadium, and we found a bench to sit on. Lunch was sandwiches and apples under green branches with a light breeze, perfect. Our next stop was to check out Pompeii's theaters. There were two of them, a small one and a large one. These were mostly intact as well, and preparations were being made for a performance in the large theater. It's cool they still use the theaters today.
From the theaters, we made our way to the northern part of the city, looking at various houses along the way. We found Pompeii's largest home with mosaic floor remnants and partial frescoes on a wall. There was a courtyard with a small flower in the center. This would have been a nice place to live. After one house, we saw a long line in the street. We walked up to see why, and a few tour groups were waiting to get in the brothel. Even though this is one of Pompeii's most famous sites, it wasn't worth waiting in line. We returned to the main square near the entrance and visited the museum. It was hard to appreciate because there were so many people inside. I think we were between tour groups, and it felt more like we were moving with a current at times. We could take more time to look at things in a couple of larger rooms. The museum was our last stop, and we bid farewell to the ruins of Pompeii.
A large grocery store was just a short distance down the street from the Pompeii entrance. We decided to go there since it was on our way home, and we wouldn't need to walk further past our place to go to the other one we went to when we arrived. Walking to the bus stop, we saw one leave as we approached. We didn't want to wait for another since we had freezer and refrigerator items. Our place wasn't that far, so we continued walking. It worked out in our favor because we didn't see one pass us on the way home. This meant we would have arrived later if we waited for the bus. After dinner, we watched a movie with some cookies.
The next we went to see the Caserta Palace. It's the world's largest palace by volume, which I find a hilarious way of looking at it. It also has gardens that extend two miles behind it. Everything about the palace was built on a large scale. We didn't realize what a hard time we would have getting there. To start the morning, we left late and missed the metro train. We caught the next one, but it set us back 30 minutes, and we needed to catch another train later. When we arrived at the main train terminal, we didn't see a train leaving for Caserta for over an hour. Tanya asks an attendant, and she says to get on the train that will go to the stop before Caserta and catch a bus from there. We decide to do this and get on the train.
When we arrived at the station, we found out the bus stop for the Caserta Palace bus was just out front. There are two large buses there and a long line of people. They are nearly full, so we must wait for the next ones. We thought this worked like any other bus stop where another would be along shortly. Oh, how wrong we were. Fifteen minutes pass, and the line gets longer since more people are coming from the train station. There is a bus stop across the street for local buses in this town, and I walk over to ask if he knows when another bus will arrive for us. He said they come every thirty minutes. That is longer than I thought, but it's only another ten minutes. Those ten minutes turn into fifteen and twenty more minutes. All we can do is wait in the sun with no shade.
While waiting, I started to talk to the guy in front of us. He said they were working on the tracks at the Caserta station all morning so that no trains would arrive there. It was around 11:15-11:30 at this point. So, everyone who planned on going to the palace this morning by train had to stop here and get on a bus. It had been over an hour since we arrived, and it was apparent that the same two buses were running a route to the palace and back. We thought there should have been better planning to accommodate an entire morning of people coming to the palace who couldn't get there by train. One large bus came around the corner, and the line of people prepared to board once it stopped. Unfortunately, it just drove by. A little later, another large bus arrived from the opposite direction and stopped across the street. Several people from the line asked about our bus and, possibly, if he would take us. He wasn't going to the palace, and lots of people were restless just waiting here, not knowing a bus schedule.
Eventually, another bus pulls up, and it gets mobbed. I just cared about my family staying together, so we didn't jump in the rush. Luckily, we were able to get on. I had my youngest in my lap for the ride, and some people were standing despite this not being that kind of bus. We knew it would take at least thirty minutes to get there. We went through some small towns and farmland on our way. At one point, the bus stopped for the driver to talk to some people driving past, and we were curious if the driver knew where he was going. It took over thirty minutes to get there, but we eventually did. We arrived about two hours later than we planned. Oh well, we are still going to enjoy our day here.
The Caserta Palace was an amazing place. We stood in line for about 10 minutes for tickets and because the palace is so huge there weren't any lines inside. The main entrance into the palace is a large grand staircase that splits to go up either side. There were so many ornate carvings and decorations going up. This ceiling there seemed at least forty feet high. At the top is a domed ceiling and two other massive rooms. One of the rooms is the palace's church, which looked like a smaller version of a beautifully ornate cathedral. From here, we walk down one side of the palace and go into large room after large room. They have high, painted ceilings, some with carvings and others painted to look like it. There are signs in each room explaining what they were used for. The meeting rooms progressed from military regiments in
which to gather to military leaders to leaders and noblemen of other countries. As the importance of the rooms progressed, so did the design, size, and beauty. Then we arrived at the throne room. It was remarkable. The throne room was massive, with what looked like a gold-covered ceiling wherever it wasn't painted. It was truly a sight to behold.
From there, we went through lots of different rooms. These included bedrooms, drawing rooms, nurseries, libraries, sitting rooms, and studies. Each room looked different. Each one had different designs on the walls and ceilings. A few rooms were used to display modern art, which, in my opinion, seriously clashed with everything about the palace. I didn't like the art anyway, and displaying it in a place of historical importance and beauty made it worse. Such a colossal palace with all the polished varieties of stone and marble from floor to ceiling was truly a wonder.
Our next experience here would be the gardens. It covers 120 hectares and several connected ponds that extend the entire 2 miles from the back of the garden to the palace. We took a shuttle to the back of the gardens and explored from there. There are two large, beautiful fountains and many walking trails. From the fountain at the back, we went to the English garden. This place was magnificent. They built a Roman ruin replica that looked amazing with so much greenery around it. We ate lunch here and enjoyed the sounds of the birds and the wind in the trees. The gardens here are teaming with lizards, so my middle child thoroughly enjoyed himself hunting them. Walking through this was so relaxing, refreshing, calming, and everything related to those feelings.
We walked from here to another large fountain about halfway down the series of ponds. With all the sculptures on the water, it looks like nothing we've seen before. It's the sort of thing replicated at a water ride in an amusement park. Returning, we see so many varieties of trees, and we walk back on the other side of the English garden. Since we got there so much later than planned, we can't see as much of the gardens as planned. However, what we did see was quite satisfying. There was a long wait for the shuttle back to the palace, but the kids didn't care. I say the kids because Tanya and I could spend the entire day in a place like this. We would have loved strolling the two miles back to the palace, surrounded by these gardens and the scapes they offered.
This was an eventful day. Seeing the sheer magnitude of the palace and the gardens was more than impressive. Several movies have been filmed in the palace, and we could see it in person. I want to go back and see more of the gardens. Despite all the walking, I hope the kids will look back on it with good memories. It still felt good to get home and recover from the day. Being in nature helped dissolve the stress of how the day started. Overall, we gained another excellent family experience.
Comments