Roma Plus Camping

We left the autocamping site early the next morning. For some reason I had been promoted to trip navagator and my map skills plus my natural intuition kept us lost just on the outskirts of Rome for nearly two hours. Rome is surrounded by a highway that circles the city in a ring. We missed our exit, but managed to get back to our road after a little backtracking (thankgoodness we didn't have to go all the way around the entire circle). We then drove up and down a twelve mile stretch of highway exploring every side road that branched off it in search of our hostel. I found our directions conflicting and I still believe that it was just our methodical method of checking every road that found us our camping site.



Of course we didn't have a reservation.



They wouldn't let us have a tent without a reservation so they directed us up the hill to their internet access point/computer lab to make a reservation online. After we booked two tents we walked back down to the office and checked in. Then we drove up into the Roma plus camping site. Parked at one of their restruants and walked to our tents. The picture at the top of this post is the girls' tent. It was closer than the boys' tent. As you can see the tents aren't really all that tent-ish. They're more like little house rooms that were completely impervious to bugs (well most bugs anyway. One evening a particularly determined hornet managed to force its way into the girls' tent, much to their consternation. They woke me up to show me what was left of its dead body after it had been beaten to death with pellows).





The boys' tent looked exactly the same only it was closer to the highway (I believe the highway connected the Roman police force with every emergency in the city as every couple minutes we would hear another siren racing by). I was on the top bunk with Tallis below me. Schyler was on the single bunk across from us.




A day of hot stuffy highway navigating put us in the mood for a relaxing swim in the Roma plus Pools. That's our tent in the background. We did absolutely nothing, but swim and be lazy around the pools all day. We swam in both the big pools and then tried the jakoozy (ok... has anyone tried to spell that word before? I am never going to use it again). Much to our surprise, instead of being hot and bubbly, it was freezing cold and bubbly. After the initial shock it was the most relaxing thing I had ever been in. Just the thing after the blazing car ride in the morning. After we had been thourougly doused we sat in the sun around the pool and people watched. Roma plus camping was popular with people from all over the world. Super hip Germans, the whitest English dude I have ever seen (he was ponchy too... honestly he looked like he was made of sour cream) and a fat man sunburned beyond cultural identification. There was an especially entertaining scrawny little kid who peed in the pool before he got in. I think Schyler and I were the only one's who saw him and so of course we passed a very enjoyable afternoon watching anybody else get in (we did warn Tallis and the girls). The best was when the super cool would deign to go for a swim. They would not be so cool if only they knew what they were swimming in. It was a good day.



Look how gorgeous this place is!

That is the restruant on whose porch we would gather each morning, drink coffee, internet and prepair for our day. Each evening after swimming or showering we would gather again and play poker, internet and relax.

Last night of Autocamping

We were going to reach Rome the next day and we had a nice hostel all picked out in Rome. We would spend one more night autocamping between Gaeta and Rome. This is where we wound up. We had a long discussion with the very hip Italian at the entrace of the autocamp. I think it cost us fifty Euros to camp for the night, which was expensive, but we were all kinda tired and confused and we could hear the beach calling us (we got to the autocamp around two in the afternoon I think). After we parked the car we walked down the straight road about half a mile to the beach and swam in the water for the rest of the day. There were actually pretty good sized waves this day and it was sunny and the beach was actual sand, which was awesome. We could swim really far off into the sea because every hundred feet or so there was another sand bar and the water was shallow enough to stand in again. We saw a giant pinkish jellyfish too. It was about a foot in diameter and swimming out to sea. We followed it and swam around it for a while. it was very cool.



We finally got tired of the beach and headed back to our car for dinner and washing and that sort of thing. There were tons of bugs again, but I took comfort in the thought of a real bed the next day.



The only light came from a giant street light set up right next to our car. I threw my towel over it eventually so we could sleep (I didn't use my towel again until I washed it as the lamp was covered in a thousand dead and dying night bugs of all shapes and sizes and actually fell off the lamp and onto the dirt twice during the night).



Tallis and I had our nightly game of Texas hold 'em again this night. This is the hand I lost on. Those of you who know anything about poker can see how agonizing this hand was for me.

Gaeta

I love this little town so very very much. It could very nearly be my favorite ever. We happened to go through it on our way from Napoli to Rome and we got lunch here. It is on the tip of this tiny little pennisula and is very hilly and filled with tall majestic buildings.

We wandered for about half an hour and saw a good bit of the town while looking for a suitable eatery. We eventually settled on a small sea food restruart right on the edge of the water. The owner brought us each out a bag of deep fried calamari and we also ordered a plate of Alici (which are the tiny eyeball fish). It was all super super good and reasonably priced.

We walked across the to this gelateria after lunch. See the clear shield sign on the wall there? That's an award from a gelato college. So so so so SO good! Cheap, huge portions and the best flavors you could ever imagine. There is not as much cream in gelato, so the flavor is much more intense and accurate than the flavor in icecream.

Tallis and his gelato.

Team Woomert and their gelati.

Mt. Vesuvius

We got up early in the morning, had breakfast, and headed up through Naples to the slopes of Vesuvius. We actually found our way fairly quickly and were soon out of the city and driving through a trees behind a bus. We reached to the top of the tree line in about half an hour where we parked in a big parking lot (There was a French guy having a lot of trouble parking his car where he was supposed to and we watched for several minutes while the parking attendant tried to get him to line his car up with the others). We paid for our tickets to the top and walked for another half an hour to the top. It was very barren and rocky and totally looked like it could be a volcano.

That's the city of Napoli. Pretty much everyone living there will be killed if (when) Vesuvius erupts again. I was super excited to visit Vesuvius after studying it in a Natural Hazards and Disasters class at UI. The class was split into groups and we were all supposed to make an evacuation plan for the city of Napoli. The general concensus was that everyone should get out now... (remember Steph? Remember? Then we'd go play fooseball... good times).

Team Woomert all decked out in their Greens! Again. I was lucky to have Tallis to match with me.

Autocamping Dog

This was Tivoli just after she screamed and leapt into me. It was very rude of her. She had been scared by the dog at the entrance of the autocamp again.

I'm not sure I ever actually saw it move...

Pompei

A colloseum in Pompei. I think it's the oldest one still standing or something like that.



Team Woomert. Girls in lighter shades of whatever the boys are wearing. I felt so out of place...

Inside it was big and round and old and had lots of people taking pictures in it.

This is actually one some of the smoothest street stones in the entirety of Pompie. Most places there was about four inches of space between the worn down stones and the stones themselves stood about six inches from the ground, so it was very hard to walk anywhere without paying close attention to your feet... which is hard to do because there is interesting old stuff everywhere around you.

These were some really hugemongous trees outside the colloseum... although you can't tell how tall they are in the picture... or course...

I think this is something famous because I kept seeing pictures of it.

This guy was about a foot tall and very naked. I was clever in the angle I photographed him at.

A street in Pompei. We had a map of Pompei and we would walk to places that sounded interesting. We would often take the long way round places to avoid large crowds of tourists. They would sometimes overtake us and surround us in a wave of cameras and conversation... always lead by someone carrying a flag... or a pole... or sometimes just a piece of trash on a stick.

A random courtyard.

Another street (Tallis looks epic). I was a little dissapointed in what the tourists had done to Pompei. Every little nook or cranny was filled with wrappers and bottles. Thousand year old wells had a layer of old coke bottles and trash at the bottom. Trash and garbage hid, in little quanteties, was sprinkled all over Pompei.

An ancient bath house. The people in charge had layed carpet down over all the floor tiles so as not to ruin the mosaics. It was rather sweltering inside, but very cool.

Temple o'Zeus I do believe.

This was a cool tower circle-y thing, but I have no idea what it was. There were lizards all over it and Tivoli caught one.

We walked around all day and got very tired and hot and ready for a meal by the time we left. We walked down a street to a hip little cafe and got pizza there. Tallis and I played poker in the car by the light of the few lamps in the auto camp that night. I was bit by a lot of mosquitoes that night. There were a whole bunch of fireworks that went off in the distance around three in the morning, which was a little bit awakening. Plus I thought Pompei was erupting every time a train went past the autocamp... but other than that it was a good night of sleeping in the car. Well... as good as a night of sleeping in a car can get.

six in the morning

Everyone was feeling pretty dirty and tired the next morning. We had Nutella and bread and some gas station juice for breakfast. Tallis had to run back inside the station just after this picture to get the keys from Schyler, because a big camper wanted to top off the pressure in it's tires right where we were parked.

Then we were off driving on the highway again. Around ten we came into sight of the first famous thing I'd seen on the trip yet. Vesuvius. I saw it through the trees, hazy and pale with the dust of distance. I was terribly terribly excited. As the morning wore on we got closer and the volcano loomed bigger. It was gorgeous and rather frightening. I didn't like having my back to the mountain. I couldn't see how people lived within sight of the volcano. It was an ominous shadow in the back of my mind for the two days we stayed there.

We were going to see Pompei today. We got lost in Napoli for about an hour trying to find it. Apparently there are a lot of hotels and restruants called 'Pompei' and they all advertise with big signs along the road, 'Pompei this way! One Kilometer! Next right turn! Next left turn! One Kilometer behind you!' Eventually we did find it and an autocamp right next to it. We unloaded all our stuff and then headed across the street to the entrance. We fought through a press of tour guides and tourists, bought our ticket and headed into the dead city.