Up Pompeii

Welcome, volcanic reader, as this week we visit Naples and Pompeii.

I'm ashamed to say I've just paid my first-ever visit to Italy; ashamed, because my love of espresso, cured meats and pasta mean that I consider myself to be basically Italian. But anyway, my first visit here involved spending some time in Naples and the archaeological site at Pompeii.

At Pompeii, we were lucky enough to take a guided tour, and it soon becomes clear why that's a good idea: the site is absolutely vast, and tremendously well preserved. As someone that's used to visiting Roman ruins in the UK which are just that (if you're lucky, you'll get to see a floorplan or a foot or two of Roman wall in the UK, with the notable exception of sections of Hadrian's Wall), seeing something on the scale of a town of ten to twenty thousand people, where many buildings are preserved to basically roof level, is staggering. The roads in Pompeii are original, and wandering down the middle of the street with buildings on both sides, it's very atmospheric.

Perhaps most striking about Pompeii are the paintings. Many of the buildings have surviving ornate frescos on the internal walls, which have been cleaned up but otherwise mostly left alone. It's worth going just to see these, really.

In Pompeii, it was drizzling, but the rain waited until we got back to Naples to properly open up. We spent quite a while walking around the city getting soaked before finally giving in. Naples is currently proudly celebrating their football team being top of Serie A, the top Italian division, by some distance with only a few games to play. There are blue-and-white streamers strung between the buildings on many of the narrow streets, along with the traditional rude messages about Northern rivals Juventus.

Based on what we saw of the city, there are two things that the Neapolitans love in addition to football: one is food, and the other is souvenir shops. As you may have stereotypically expected for Italy, food and coffee here is consumed in tiny cafes or just grabbed and consumed on the street. I had some sort of pizza concoction with dough something like a Cronut (yup, been in America too long, where a Cronut is a donut made of croissant batter), with tomato sauce, mozzarella and basil on the top. Of course, it was great. For one solitary Euro I got a single espresso which wasn't the best ever, but was still better than you'd get in most high streets in the UK.

It's great to be back in Europe: unlike other destinations on this trip, Naples is almost entirely unencumbered by US chains. Given that Italians love coffee, I didn't expect see a Starbucks here, but it was nice not to see a Wendy's, Popeye's or Auntie Annie's either.

I managed to just about resist the temptation to buy a new mocha pot, despite one of the cafes selling an impressive range of them. Next it's Lisbon, then our triumphant return to the UK. Not much has happened while we've been away, has it?