The excursion left quite early this morning: 6:15am. We docked near Naples (didn’t see much of it but what I saw was not very nice) and drove to Sorrento. This is a cool “beach” town with the beach backed by sheer cliffs. Sorrento is famous for its lemons and had very cool lemon “nurseries” all around.

There is actually an entire street dedicated to Limoncello but i was only 9 in the morning so I skipped that. Sorrento was a cool town but I felt like we had way too much time there, too much shopping time but not enough time to get down to the beach.

Back on the bus to Pompei. We had a mediocre pizza lunch (my first pizza in Italy and I was not impressed) then headed into Pompei itself. Wow, what history. Many of our guides have been wonderful but this guy was kind of a jerk and he walked so fast. Our time in Pompei was probably only about an hour; I could have used at least double that. One of the more interesting things was the brothel where you pointed to the “picture” that best described the service you were interested in!! Nice soft beds, too!! (HA!)

Our guide hurried us to go watch a demonstration of how cameos are made. I bailed on that and went back to the bookstore in Pompei. There I bought myself an historical fiction novel which starts 4 days before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. Really quite fascinating to read how the people 1900 years ago lived….some things have not changed!!!

I really could have used much more time in Pompei and at the museum. (Funny because my sister took the same cruise 4 months before me and she said they had a couple of hours at Pompei and not enough time in Sorrento!!)