September 29 to October 10, 2023, Naples and Rome

September 29 was a looooong travel day. Luke and I drove all the way back across Italy to drop off the rental car in Pisa and then took a long but relatively easy train ride from Pisa down to Naples; the first 8 hours of the trip were a piece a cake compared to the last 30 minutes, which should have been an easy train ride from the Naples metro stop to the Ercolano stop. Ahh it was so frustrating trying to find the right system and the right platform and find the right desk (yes, desk, not a ticket machine).  Wow Naples, really really bad public transit information! Luke and I almost lost it on each other trying to figure it out. After a week working with the Naples train system, we agreed it was not our tired-travel-brains, it is just a really bad transit system.

Gol-ly Naples trains, they're impossible to figure out; we got on one and asked a woman in a nice-looking work suit what its destination is and she said, "Chi lo so?" Who knows? 

Ok, but, we got to our apartment right near the metro stop and right near the Ercolano (aka Herculaneum in English) archeological site.  Amazing, we dropped out bags and walked down to the site; you can stand on a bridge for free looking down on the city that was buried by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD (along with the much more famous Pompeii, which was just a short train ride away; we learned in reading Pliny the Younger’s letter to Tacitus about what he witnessed that day and other texts that there were about 5,000 people living in Herculaneum and 12,000 in Pompeii, 2,300 to maybe 16,000 people, counting those in areas around the cities, perished).  

We visited:

Ercolano/Herculaneum:  Wow, amazing archeological dig, with the modern town of Ercolano surrounding the site, so striking to have the modern town all around the dig.  79 AD Ercolano was very prosperous, with grand Roman villas.  It was so amazing to see the ancient town just as it was, market stalls, granaries, the harbor (when Vesuvius blew, it put about a hundred yards of new land in front of where the harbor used to be in 79).  I was memorably struck by how… rich people were!  They had beautiful statutes in their garden, mosaics of family members on the walls, and specialized rooms, like, one room was a cool room, where family members would come and sit on cool tile where the floor was a ”wet” floor that would flood with cool water to cool your feet after a long day of walking on the cobblestones.  “Ancient” people, of course, were just like us, they also got hot in the Naples early fall!

 

The stars of Herculaneum, stray cats..!  

Preserved, Herculaneum and, behind the archeological site, is Mount Vesuvius.  

Well-preserved street-food market counter, Luke and Alex are serving! 

Roman road in Herculaneum, still walkable 2,000 years old. 

We spent our second day in the region in the heart of Naples – Ouch though, it was the first Sunday of the month and we learned that is an “everyone goes out day”.  It was so crazy to get on the train and make it through the City. I have been in crowded stations before, but yikes, when we got to the central Naples train station, I have never seen a crowd like that just to get through the turnstile to make your way down to the platforms – It didn’t help that Naples’ train system is subpar (did I mention there were like few to no ticket machines and each person bought a ticket from a human person!).  We braved the crowds and made it to the surprisingly lovely and well-done National Archaeological Museum.  Unfortunately, we didn’t do our homework on this museum (without some pieces to look for and talk about, the kiddos do not like to stay and browse museums for very long and.. part of the travel-for-a-year deal was that we would NOT go to museums “like, everyday”) so we only stayed a short time. Long enough though to see our second Laocoon of the trip and a great Pompeii model.

Alex in Naples Archeological Museum, in front of a mosaic of Alexander the Great.

We continued to two other sights we wanted to see in Naples – one was a palace converted to a church and the other was a cathedral with an incredible sculpture in it of a woman with a full—length veil (apparently, the sculpture of the face and body beneath a veil is just amazing).  Well.. so may people!  We made it to the palace cum church in time to watch them close their doors for a long siesta; parched, we fought our way to a drink and some pizza; we trudged to the cathedral to find that all of the tickets for the entire day were sold out; so we trained-over to the Naples Maradona soccer stadium; Katie got her scarf (and Luke bought a sweat-wristband that he just refused to take off for quite a number of days, Napoli! Napoli!) and then we gave up on Napoli and walked back to the train station.  We had to wait quite a long time for our train because the signage was not clear (at all) about which platform we should be on, so we missed a few going our direction.  Eh, we were all grouchy and tired, and told each other that sometimes, trip days just do not go your way, on any front at all.  This didn’t get us over our collective grouchiness, but we all made it home to try again the next day.

Fail day, we wandered around a whole lot in Naples and didn't visit most of the places on our list.

With that fail-day behind us, we planned a bit better the next day and bought bus and entry tickets ahead of time to Mount Vesuvius.  Ah, we were well-rewarded!  Climbing the mountain was a big highlight of this leg of the trip.  Great views, interesting geology, and we could see the monitoring equipment in the caldera and vents in the mountain that were steaming with its lava rumbles.  We of course did the quick safety check on how far we could get out of the region if there were a volcanic activity warning; with ~3 million people in the region, we were a bit disturbed by how the roads would handle the evac, but figured those dastardly Naples trains would be rolling and would get us far enough away.
 

From the top of Mount Vesuvius. 

Luke and Alex on top of the world!  And Katie examining rocks.

Ah, and then we spent the next day in the incredible Pompeii. Like in Herculaneum, I was struck but how stopped-in-time the city was; it was much much larger than Herculaneum and much more crowded with visitors (to get the reduced price for the kids, we could not buy tickets in advance, so I had to stoutly make my way to the ticket window, the worst line-jumpers are the free-lancing tour guides who promise their customers “skip the line” tickets which basically means they just skip the line by cutting and boldly going up to the ticket window). 

The Pompeii colosseum, amphitheater, and streets and villas were excellent to experience. I was the most struck, though, by the forum; this center of the town, with these great ruins of temples to that city’s favorite Roman gods.  One temple was perfectly placed to be framed by Mount Vesuvius, right in the background..  I looked out over the temple, with the mountain that was the city’s doom, beautifully framing that ruined, decorative architecture and just imagined how beautiful it all must have looked 2,000 years ago.

Beautiful temple behind Luke and Vesuvius 

Pretty nice-looking 2,000 year old fresco.

Battle royal in Pompeii. 

 

Luke making his "say cheese" face in front of this great room in a Roman villa - This was what I call the foot-cooling room, where the villa inhabitants would come and sit on the cool marble and place their feet into water flowing from the great Roman plumbing.

I was so puzzled by the jugs with pointed bottoms, thinking, Roman design is so good, why are these not designed to stand up? I later read a theory that the jugs are made to transport liquids (not to stand up on the floor of a shop) and that the pointed bottoms might act like "arches", making the jug bottom  less likely to break under the weight of the contents.  

After many weeks of a good-park drought, we found a great park in Ercolano; phew, the kids enjoyed playing and Alex and Luke joined a little soccer game with like 6 other smaller kids; they dominated.

Enjoying a tiny game of soccer; Luke and Alex learned the Italian word "passe.. passe!" which clearly meant pass me the ball, I am open!  

We left our sweet little apartment in Ercolano, feeling very good about our short and easy travel day on the train to Roma!  Such a short day! Ah, it was not to be easy though. We walked on over to the dreaded-train platform with all of our backpacks before we realized that our little “violin that could” was… not in our possession.  Oh drat…  We frantically contacted our nice Airbnb host who was of course working. She was so great and managed to find someone who could open the apartment for me; I ran back and found the violin underneath a bed in Alex and Luke’s room, phew! I made it back to the get on one of those tricky Napoli-trains to make it to the main station and meet Scott and the crew before our Rome train was scheduled to leave. Phew, that little violin is using up its nine-lives!  We made some new moving-day rules:  nothing goes under the beds (on purpose, at least), kids are responsible for looking under all beds before we leave, and Scott would be on point at responsible for the violin each time we packed up a house.

Back on track, we made it to Rome and to our apt just a few blocks from the Vatican, yah.  Scott and I have both been to Rome, but this was our first time really trying out their metro system. We had heard not great things about it, but it worked very well and had many welcome facilities -  signs, destinations listed on trains, multiple ticket booths – that seemed so sensible after Naples. 

In Rome, we were not special. We did everything that everyone does.  The first night, we walked to Piazza Novella, to the Pantheon, and to the Trevi fountain. 

                 

At the Piazza Novella, in front of the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. 

Luke and Pantheon (gasp, he wore his Napoli wristband that first day in Rome!). 

Kids, right after they each threw their coins into the Fountain.  We read that about $3,000 is collected in the Fountain each day. 

The second day, we got up as early as we could manage and walked a good 50 minutes to get in line for the Colosseum.  Ahh, it was a long line!  I marched to the end. You see, we had tried to buy tickets in advance but, as we noticed in Florence, the tourist companies (Get Your Guide, Viator, etc) buy all the advance tickets for popular places, then, they resell them to you with a big markup and include things like “audio guide”, “skip the line”, or “pizza lunch” so you buy way more than what you wanted to buy.  We bought these types of tickets for the Vatican but I couldn’t bring myself to buy them for the Colosseum (because our memory was that seeing the outside of the building is almost as good as the inside!).   I stood in line for about an hour while the other 4 tromped around the site, enjoying Constantine’s Arch, the beautiful exterior of the Colosseum, and other sights; they returned and we estimated that it would take 3 more hours to get to the front. We bailed on the line. 

It was not an hour wasted for me though, I ended up chatting to two of my linemates, one from Australia and the other a Brit, but also from Canada.  And they were both.. conspiracy people! They were so pleasant, we three were sharing travel stories.. them, somehow one of them mentioned ”fires in Maui”, Oh, we all agreed, it is so sad. Then one of them said, Its suspicious though, you know, about Oprah’s house. And about the blue roofs that didn’t burn. And they both continued to spout out crazy conspiracies straight out of bot-social media accounts about space lasers (you know, the governments have lasers). I very pleasantly pressed back, like, Oh, you think the government would burn Maui? Why? And what about all the other wildfires, are those government lasers too or just wildfires?  And they mentioned the Trump charges (oh man, non-Americans even talk about Trump charges), Wow, they said, where did those come from (conspiracy). I Well, well, or he is a criminal being charged with a crime, even though he used to be President, he is not above the law, isn’t that showing a good part of government that political leaders are subject to the law. One of them said, well, they are all criminals, everyone is corrupt. I shared how my experience working in government is that people in government are just people doing jobs; no better or worse (actually, I think many of them are better) than people doing other jobs. And that governments are so big, it is very hard to keep ‘secrets’ because doing anything requires so many people to be involved… I wished I had pressed them more, I wish I had asked something like: What in your experience leads you to think all these bad things about your government?   I wish I had more than an hour with them, I could have dug in more! It is so rare I get a chance to talk to people with these views.. Oh well, I never got to the “experience” question which is the one I am interested in, like, what happened to you to lead you to believe these things about so many other humans? 

Instead, we listened to a Rick Steve’s audio guide of the Roman forum, went the Pantheon (under their new ticketing system), and enjoyed some really good gelato.  I will have to leave my inquiry into conspiracy-prone-folks for a later date..

Kids in front of ruins of the giant Basilica at the Roman Forum. The building was a secular, administrative building for people to use for government services, courts, and as a meeting hall. Its shape - a long rectangle, with an aps at the end - was chosen by Constantine to be the basis for the new Christian church houses of worship. 

At the Roman Forum.

At the Pantheon - On the right, we watched this light-circle move along the edge of dome's wall for quite a while, tracing the sun's path. 

Next day, we got up early and headed over to St. Peter’s basilica. Wow, I have been there before and it is still/again completely overwhelming.  The size, the presence of the place, amazing job, Catholics.  We took our time viewing Michelangelo’s Pieta (behind glass this time, the first time I saw it, there was no glass, but some idiot jumped on it with a hammer a decade or so back so, now, glass), a few Rafael pieces, the body of Pope Benedict (like the other bodies, his body is waxed, it is stranger to look at a body that was alive in my memory than to look at the much older bodies in the church), and we searched unsuccessfully for the Old Pretender and the Bonny Prince Charles who were buried in or have memorials in St. Peter’s (after all of our Scotland research, seeing the place where the Prince who lost at Culledon was buried after he fled from Scotland to Italy, where the Pope took him in, seemed like a good way to finish the study circle!).

 We of course climbed right up that basilica.  The gates around the viewing platform mar it a bit (leaning tower of Pisa and Florence Duomo both have areas where the views are unobstructed) but looking down on the Vatican ellipse-piazza and the roof of the Sistine chapel and getting to be inside the dome that Michelangelo built is very special.

 

My favorite way to take photos of all the amazing domes we've seen - St. Peter's Basilica here. 

Halfway to the top of the done. 

On top of St. Peter's. 

And then! The cherry on top! We used our skip the line and audio-guide magic tickets to get into the Vatican museums.  The first time I visited the Vatican,  I remember the set up of the place sort of forcing you to run through the museum, then being shoved - exhausted and dehydrated - into the Sistine Chapel, then trying to look up and getting a craned neck while being pushed along in a line and not.. getting as much out of it as I thought I would.  This time!  We all did research on what we’d see; Katie chose to write a research paper on the Sistine Chapel and the Last Judgment, I had read up on the Rafael paintings we’d see and had a scene-by-scene matrix of the Sistine Chapel.. we were ready!   

Best laid plans.  Something happened among the kids as we walked through the skip the line line.  Someone  did something and someone wanted an apology and that did not happen. So, my experience this time was an angry little girl, vacillating between being angry and being glum, being drug along via threats and cajoling while also trying to help Alex and Luke understand what they were seeing, while at the same time trying to make sense of and take in hallways and hallways of art.  Highlights, we saw our third Laocoon of the trip, that was cool.  We chatted to a guide who was so enthusiastic and wanted to make sure kids like ours enjoyed their visit, as we walked towards the Rafael rooms he said, “Brava! No one should skip the Rafael rooms to get to the Sistine Chapel sooner!” And then he told the kids they should walk into the Sistine Chapel with their eyes closed, us guiding them to the middle of the room, then they should look up to see it all at once! That the experience would be so impactful!   The Rafael rooms were amazing, so glad we spent a lot of time in them, it is true what I have read, his life was too short, his impact could have been so much greater, the high Renaissance surely did come to an early end with his death.

And finally the Chapel!  Ah, I arrived completely tired and dehydrated (no change there).  My neck got craned.   But, at least this time I was able to make it to a good spot in the room to look up for a long time. I enjoyed many more of the panels because I knew what to look for.  I took in the Last Judgment.   And then, Alex and Luke were tired, they finally managed to get to a seat. Katie was beyond emotionally done. We followed the herd out of the room and to the gift shop. 

 

Me in front of Raphael's School of Athens, one of my favorites. 

Reflecting on it, the museum experience is rather like being herded - you cannot choose which room to go to next and you definitely cannot go back to a room you liked - you are just like the sheep in all the Catholic paintings.  It seems very counter to art generally! But also very consistent with religious art.   And the practical side of me argues, Well, they need to get 10,000 in and out of those doors each day, they can’t leave people much in the way of choices and allowances to get inspired and linger in any one spot. 

A short time after we left, Katie was back to her old happy self but she dejectedly said, I want to go back to the Sistine Chapel, I didn’t look at all of the parts of the paintings that I wanted to look at.  Oh, heartbreak!  Our reply whenever anyone says something like that is, Now you’ll have a reason to come back.  I know, it is a super satisfying reply to a dejected kiddo. 

After that emotional day, we took it easy the next day until our Lazio soccer match; Scott had found tickets to a Lazio-Atalanta match (both teams are Division I, fancy!).  I felt a bit apprehensive about it, I don’t know why, crowds shouting at a game in another language..  All for naught though, it was an amazing day!  We got there with no snafus on the bus (other than being crushed like a Victorian-era corset, ah, everyone wanted to get to the game with plenty of time!).  The stadium was great, with lots of plaza-space around it. Our seats were very good, on the side but near enough to the middle and near enough to the end-zone cheap seats. The game was great!  Lazio was ranked way behind Atalanta but went up 2 to 0 early.  Atalanta fought back and tied it 2 to 2 with 15 minutes to go.  But Lazio scored again with only 10 minutes to go in the game and held on for the win, people were so excited it was great! 

At the end of the Lazio game... People stayed for a while to cheer and sing after the exciting victory. 

 It was an early night for us because the next day – our LAST full day in Rome - Katie plotted to thwart those Colosseum ticket-re-sellers by getting up super early and being FIRST in line to get in.  Luke and Alex opted to sleep in and Scott was feeling a bit sick, so we got up at 5 and marched the 50 minutes back to that colossus and got in line as..... lucky number 25!  Ahh, it was not fun to get up early but it was soo fun to BE UP early.  The walk through Rome in the early morning light, approaching the Colosseum as the sun was rising, oh you almost couldn’t stop taking pictures (almost). So, we still had to wait in line a good 2.5 to 3 hours but we were at the FRONT, very different psychologically than making your way from the back, in the hot sun, for 3 hours. 

Alex and Luke... Are you getting up to come with us to be FIRST in line at the Colosseum? Is that a no?

Oh, the excitement when they let us to the ticket booth (tragedy for this man in front of us, they only let you buy ticket equal to the number of people physically with you and he was alone, wanting to buy tickets for his family) – back to our happiness though, we got to the front and bought out two tickets and then… had to wait another hour because all the ticket-re-seller companies had bought all the first, 9am entry timed-tickets. 

That was fine, we crossed the street for a doughnut and started our Rick Steve’s audio guide, sharing my airpods, one per ear.   We got inside and! .. it was pretty nice.  (Did I mention I really like the outside?).  The curators have some very nice Colosseum models (Katie’s model that she did for school was so good, we joked that she should sell it to the museum). 

YES! We were so excited to get our tickets. 

 We had a great time and then almost overdid it by trudging to the Capitol Museum (Katie really wanted to see the giant Constantine statue) without having lunch.  We burned our way through that museum, on energy-fumes, and were saved by Scott’s at home research on the key sights we should see in the museum (we ticked them off like treasure hunters on a mission) and we made the long walk home just before either of us exploded at one another in a fit of hangry-ness!   

Colossus of Constantine statue, at the Capitoline Museum. 

Ah what an awesome way to top off our Rome trip!  But wait, there was more! That evening, Scott had to work and I wanted to bring the kids to the magic of the Vatican at night – Scott and I had already wandered over a previous evening and it was amazing to be in that piazza, with so few people in the warm evening air, enjoying the lights on the buildings and the fountains.   We wandered over and.. the kids executed using their great negotiating skills got to play Pokemon Go (so strange, but they said that Vatican City has the BEST pokemon, ha!) and another handheld device they bought during the trip.  Wow, I looked at the fountain and the Vatican façade in the moonlight and.. felt so embarrassed that people would judge me for letting my kids play video games in that holy place!  After a little while, I got over myself, took some photos, and enjoyed the night.

And that was our last night in Italy! We got up early the next day for our flight to Greece!