Sorrento; Sunday, 02 October, 2011

At 6am when they woke me up with their crashing and banging I had wanted to do something nasty to the people in the next door apartment, but in the end they did me a favour.

Unable to get back to sleep I got up just after 7 and by 8 was having breakfast in a little café near the station.

I caught an early train out to Pompei and found myself at the site ahead of the worst of the crowds, albeit by virtue of being at the back of the train and slightly faster down the staircase at the station than the very large Saga party that had occupied most of the rest of the train.

The site is massive and in the end I spent the whole day wandering around taking in all the key sites from the Forum area up to the Villa dei Misteri and then all the way across the site to the Amphitheatre.

I’d stopped early, around 11am, for lunch, as at that time the café was empty, and I knew that wouldn’t be the case an hour later. By half four I was starting to flag a bit, so on my way back to the station I popped into a café for a late bite to eat and a drink.

By the time the train, which appeared to have some serious technical problems as it kept slamming its breaks on, finally arrived back into Sorrento it was nearly seven so I quickly wandered back to the hotel, dropped off my stuff, had a quick wash to get at least a couple of the layers of suntan cream encrusted with dust off of my skin, and then headed back out for a light dinner.