Day 17 - Pompeii and the ferry to Greece

Friday, May 28th - We had the earliest start of the tour this morning - we had to be on the coach by 5:30am. Lucky for me I was woken up around 4:45 am by a rooster crowing. There was some kind of farm adjacent to our hotel and they evidently had roosters and since I decided to sleep with the door open to our patio I got quite the wake up call. This lead to quite a grumpy morning. We had another "picnic breakfast" on the coach which consisted of fruit, pastry and some water. Similar to Barcelona I ate nothing of it. I slept a good part of the way to Pompeii, only waking up at our service stop where I had one of my favourite cappuccinos of the trip. It was so good I went back for a second, I'm still craving a cappuccino that would be close to the same. We arrived at Pompeii around 9am and met with our tour guide. He was probably the best tour guide of the entire tour, such an authentic Italian and really seemed to love his job. I was really excited to see Pompeii, I've been looking forward to visiting it ever since I learned about it in high school. It wasn't exactly what I thought it was - this probably sounds horrible but I was hoping to see all the artifacts including the dead bodies strewn about as it was when the volcano erupted but they were all being preserved behind glass. Pompeii was still awesome, it was great to hear about the history and walk the streets of an ancient place that has been preserved so well.

After our tour we had almost 2 hours to kill and Sian advised us to grab some lunch because we wouldn't be stopping for a while. I ordered a pizza and I've never seen anything greasier in my entire life. I tried to to blot out the grease but it was hopeless, I ate once piece and threw the rest out. Ben ended up stealing his lunch by accident; I had just finished paying for mine and he followed me out without paying and then some attendant just ushered us both to a table so he got his sandwich for free! Afterward Sukhey and I did a bit of shopping in the market and then it was time to drive to the ferry. We made it to the ferry and we all found out we were in for a rough ride for the next 12 hours. Sandra and I got to our room and found our toilet and shower shared the same space, how lovely. After getting settled we grabbed dinner which was quite interesting, I'm still not sure what I ate that night but I do know it tasted horrible. Going hungry was the better choice. A bunch of us hung out in the bar and I got a game of Crazy 8's going - seems to be a Canadian game, I had to teach the Aussies how to play. We played a few rounds but our group thinned out pretty quickly. Eventually it was only Sukhey, Ben and I. I had heard that we were steering into a storm so I really wanted to go out to the deck to see the storm. It was actually quite clear, full moon and heaps of stars. Sukhey ended up going to bed and it ended up just being Ben and I hanging out on the deck. Ben actually turned out to be a pretty funny guy, cracking jokes and such. We hung out for about an hour and then each went to bed. It was a fun night despite being stuck on a ferry for 12 hours.

Pompeii

More Pompeii

Even more Pomepii

Ferry to Greece