Day 20

Nube D'Argento Campsite, 8:10PM 7/10/10

I can't believe we're on day 20, but what's more unbelieveable is that we have about 50 more days of travel!! Today we got up early again and did laundry and got breakfast before catching the train to Herculaneum. The day was already hot. We got to the train station, bought out tickets and headed up to the platform. We weren't sure what time the train was supposed to leave and there was a train sitting on the platform, so we got on. It was empty and Troy began to wonder if we were one the right train, then the doors starting closing and Troy said we should get off, he jusmped off the train and the doors shut in my face. I looked at Troy with a face of shock (that he thought was hilarious) and he stood outside telling me to push the emergency open button. I finally found it and pressed it, but nothing happened. A moment later, the doors opened and I jumped off. We asked a lady when the train to Herculaneum was leaving and she said about forty minutes. So we found a seat on a bench and waited. The train that we had gotten on ended up being our train and we had no idea why they shut the doors (just to scare me).

Finally we got on the train and got to Herculaneum (named because is was supposedly founded by Hercules. This city was insane, it had been buried 12 hours after Pompei in a mudslide caused by Vesuvius and they were in the process of digging it up. The buildings were amazingly preserved with mosaic walls and flooors and paintings. We wandered around being our own tourguides (Troy videotaped and narrated almost the whole thing!) We saw somw amazing murals and evidence of daily life there. Then we went to the boat exhibit, which ended up being the coolest part. There had been this boat by where the beach had been (which was 800 meters inland now simply due to time passing) and the boat had survived the volcano and had been preserved extremely well. One of the most interesting parts about Herculaneum was the fact that the people gathered their elderly and children and made their way down toward the ocean for shelter and they were found all together in the boat area. They said that the people did not rush too much because of the fact that the old were with them and all the children. There is no mention as to how many people escaped on boats. We finally decided that it was time to get out of the heat, so we headed back to camp and I took a nap. I woke up to Troy splitting his toe open on one of our tent stakes (lesson: always hammer your stakes all the way down!!) We knew this but the ground had been so hard around our site so we had marked the spot with a chair and I guess it got moved. Poor Troy was bleeding all over and we grabbed the first aid kit and bandaged him up. Tomorrow we check out and head to Naples to get to Brindisi to catch the ferry to Greece!!