April 16 - Pompeii heaven, Trentialia hell

Yesterday was as glorious and maddening and intense as one could imagine.

It rained Saturday night, as it tends to do every night in Rome this time of year, and we awoke to freshly washed air and a cool spring day amid the bells of Sunday morning. After breakfast we set out for Termini, just a quarter mile or so from the hotel, and boarded the train for Naples. The ride was of visual splendor after visual splendor, as the hills south of Rome seem to sprout from the flat, fertile landscape.

By the time we reached Pompeii (a separate, 45-minute train ride from Naples), we were hungry and decided to have lunch at Ristorante Carlo Alberto, just of the main piazza of modern Pompeii. The highlight was an antipasto of cold cooked fish, salmon and anchovies, pickled eggplant, roasted eggplant and prosciutto.

We wandered over to I Scavi di Pompeii (the ruins) after lunch. Exploring the ruins, especially in 80-degree weather following a harsh New England winter, was exhausting and exhilarating. The absolute highlight, though, was a private tour by security guard of the House of Menander, probably a poet, who lived there at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 that destroyed the town and buried it under lava and volcanic ash. The guard showed us a reconstructed wooden carriage made with bronze hardware found among the ruins, a dining room with remarkably well preserved paintings; and a mosaic, composed of pieces barely 1/16 of an inch square, depicting a wedding scene in which the groom was depicted as small in every way but one.

After the day ended, we had to keep reminding ourselves of the wonders of Pompeii, especially since we were forced to stand for the two-hour trip back from Naples to Rome. Unknown to us, Sunday night is a most popular time for vacationers and workaday types alike to return to the capital city, and the aisles and foyers were full. I ended up standing in a gangway between two cars for the entire trip. Why Trenitalia doesn't add extra cars in such a situation, I don't know. But if Trenitalia is run anything like Poste Italiana, the postal service, I think I can imagine the answer.

Of course, an experience like this can be made less so by a stop at Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore and a gelateria, which we did before we returned to the hotel.