Naples, Italy

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Naples & Pompeii, Italy

Date: May 8, 2025

Day 4 First Port Naples & Pompeii May 8th

Naples is one of the places we spent a lot of time on You Tube exporing. Rumor has it Naples is the original home of Pizza. And thirty minutes from Naples is Pompeii that old Roman town over come by Mount Vesuvius Volcano.

Through a You Tube video we found out you could travel 45 minutes to Pompeii and not get in because they oversell the site. SO, months ago bought day tickets to get in. Pompeii is known by most grade schoolers, and we were at least going to see it.

Then upon further You Tube research we found out the place was easy to get to. Take the A train which ran every hour, to the Turbin exit, then find a Cab to drive the last mile, but get a white cab they take US Dollars. E looked at me and said does NCL have a bus? I laughed and said it’s $20 more, she said book it, I’m not getting left in Naples as our things sail away over $20.

Well, we put both the tickets and transportation purchases in our page of the day. Which was fine until we went to the meetup spot and everyone but us had a ticket. And none of the staff could help us, even though it was on our phone. We found out later our phone was our ticket, and the yellow tickets were on the paperwork that was in our room.

But we have a healthy way we look at money. We were in Naples was a few bucks going to keep us from seeing Pompeii, we were never coming back, and we are here now.

Remember Dr Jim from yesterday. One of the reasons I talk with a LOT of people is one never knows what pearls of wisdom someone contains. Dr Jim had an associate at college working on a book about the Pompeii dig. We asked him about getting to Pompeii, he told us $75 would get us a cab there and back,

So lacking tickets, which we found out later we actually had, we threw ourselves on the wolves waiting at the dock to take us to Pompeii. I walk and talk. If you can’t negotiate and walk you have zero chance with me. E follows nicely behind. The first guy offered us a tour package for $275. A block away and three wolves later we had a $80 offer to and from… deal!

Carlos our driver took E&I and a couple from Hawaii to the Pompeii dig site. He dropped us off at 9:30AM and said he’d pick us up at 11:30 AM perfect timing. We did a self-guided tour though we paid $10 each for a play as you go thing but never used them. E&I had watched HOURS of Pompeii stuff. And mostly it was about a mile square site with few if any smooth surfaces. And we did not see ANY dead petrified bodies. But you know what WE have BEEN THERE! And that is important to us.

Our driver was right on time at 11:30 and he dropped us off in town for us to get some pizza. We gave him a $30 tip. The ONE thing that scares us about cruising is the possibility of getting left on a stop without our passports. We have seen it on videos, but not too often,

In town we ordered fried Pizza Balls three for $9. They were interesting, not bad, but interesting. Then we walked a mile back to the ship and by 2 PM we were in the Vibe Beach Club Hot tub.

That evening we ate at a new concept in cruise dining. It was at a restaurant called xxxx. You order any of 100 things on an ipad including drinks and they bring it to your table. It is a very popular, free, walk in restaurant.

Then we checked with the Upcoming Cruise desk to put down our deposit for future cruise deals a great way to save about $500 on a future cruise.

Then we went to another restaurant, had a glass of wine and two deserts for free and went to our cabin to finally catch up on the sleep we were still not quite caught up with.

We were kept up for an hour when we found out the new pope was American and was looking over the square, we had been at two days prior.