Obviously if you’re in Naples, you’ve gotta go to Pompeii — it’s a quick, cheap train ride away from the city, and it’s an interesting enough piece of history to be common knowledge around the world. You’d be crazy to miss it.
But of course, so would everyone else; the place is absolutely packed. It’s probably a good idea to wake up early in the morning for this one. I showed up at around noon, and the line just to buy tickets took a solid forty minutes.
Also: don’t do what I did. I somehow managed to misplace my ticket almost immediately after buying it. I checked all my pockets, panicked, then went back to the ticket booth and essentially accused the guy of giving me my change but forgetting to give me my ticket. This resulted in him hanging a “closed” sign on his ticket window (sorry, everyone behind me), then methodically counting his money and his tickets to make sure everything added up (it did, of course, because I’m an idiot).
So I wound up buying another ticket. I then promptly found my original ticket in my back pocket, because like I said, I’m an idiot. So I showed back up at the ticket booth with my most sheepish “tourists, am I right??” grin and explained that I had the original ticket all along. The guy stared at me with a look I can only describe as pure, unadulterated disdain.
He gave me my money back, though, so there’s that.
Anyway, Pompeii was absolutely amazing, though I’d recommend doing a tour of some sort. I elected to go tour-free, because I’m a cheapo, and regretted it almost immediately. I’m not generally a big tour guy — aside from the aforementioned cheapness, I like seeing things at my own pace. But as interesting as everything was, I feel like a little bit of context would have made it all the more fascinating.
Still, even without the tour, just wandering around the ruins and taking it all in is a truly indelible experience.
