So I was done with Roma and headed South, I wanted to fill a few days before heading off to Greece with some more pointless box ticking, so I went for Naples and Pompeii. This was planned as two seperate days of touristing, but I soon discovered that Pompeii was a suburb of Naples so I decided to camp at Pompeii and travel to Napoli by train, it turned out I should have saved the train fare.

Naples was an incredible disapointment, well not really a disapointment, but it failed to excite at all. It was dirty, poorly laid out, full of terrible traffic, and badly in need of a coat of paint. My view of the town could have been soured by the fact that I was coming off three hard days touristing and was therefore very tired, but I just couldn't get enthusiastic about anything in town. There were a few things I kind of wanted to see, the Duomo, The Archealogical Museumm the Castle, and the Catacombs, but the lousy lousiness of the town in general killed my buzz in such
away that I couldn't be bothered. I walked and walked (its a poorly laid out town) until I finally found the Doumo, a great big church, I went into the museum, which sucked, and then couldn't get into the actual church - my enthusiasm meter offically dipped into the negatives, and I decided to cut the rest of the town. I would find out the next day that this was a huge mistake as most of the good stuff they found at Pompeii is now ono display at the Archealogical Museaum, but whatever- if I had gone to the meuseum I wouldn't have been in the mood anyways.

I got a solid afternoon/evening's relaxing in thanks to my piking on Napoli so woke up bright and early the next morning to go see the ruins of Pompeii, the ancient Roman town which was famously distroyed by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in about 74 BC. I spent a bit of extra time preparing my outfit for the day, I wanted to be in my best Archealogist Outfit, unfortunatly I lost my cool hat in a drunken haze in Arny Le Duc, but I think the bull whip set off the outfit well- people had to know what I was all about.

Pompeii is very much well worth the visit. Back when I was an actual history type person I was never really interested in the whole, this is how they lived their every day lives, type stuff. But Pompeii is really quite interesting. My favorites where the Basillica, House of Mysteries, the small Theatre, and the small version of Collosimo. There was a slight downer however, in the fact that it involves a lot of walking, I don't know what I was expecting, but it is a complete town, and too see the whole thing you need to walk alot - my doggs still weren't 100% so by the end off the whole town I was a little tired.

The next day was time to sign out of Camping Sparticus (we're I was staying) so I set off early once again, this time to go up to the top of Mt Vesevius to get its prospective on the whole destruction of the town thing. The climb up to the car park was enough fun, the Messy Days only just handled the trip, it seriously took about 40 minutes driving straight up- easily out of category - 12-13 km's climbing up 1000 metres - quite serious.

So this climb gets you to the car park which still leaves you a couple of hundred metres below the top of the Mountain. I eagerly set about the climb however, as I was very keen to see some Lava, and get some use out of the Aniken skywalker costume I was wearing, but in the end it turned out their was no lava to be seen, no smoke neither - all in all, probably the most disapointing of all the Volcano's I have ever climbed. Nonetheless, great veiws, and something tells me that Vesuvius will get the last laugh, there are now 3,000,000 people living in the area's around the mountain, if it decides to blow its top again it will do some serious damage- I would care, but I was watching that World Cup round of 16 mach, maybe they could try their take a dive antics then... lets see how that works against the lava you greasy itai fucks!

Anyways, son I was finished Vesuvio and it was only 11 in the day. I needed to come up with something to do for the rest of the day, Amalfi was only a hundred odd KM's away so I headed off in that direction. However as I got closer and closer I started to wonder why I was doing this- I had no interest in going to Amalfi, which was good news when I got to the 20 KM to go mark and some charlie was blocking the road and told me I had to turn around- I didn't know what he was saying, but it made Amalfi offically to difficult for my tastes, so I turned around and headed in the opposite direction.

I had to admit to myself that I was now offically over Italy, there is only so much of one place you can take, and apparently 10 odd days is my limit. So I headed across the country towards the Adriatic in order to tick the biggest italian box I had on my list and then catch the ferry to Greece.

There were four absolutes when I got on the plane to come over here: Monaco for GP, Tour De France, Cannae, and the RWC. I had compelted the first two and today gave me a great opportunity to kick a goal and see the ancient battlefield of Cannae, on the adriatic coast in the Puglia section of Italy. Cannae, as all the 2nd Punic War freaks out their will tell you is the great battle where old Hannibal wiped the floor
with a much larger Roman army, bringing the Roman's to their knees for the first time. The battle (around 216 BC) was so long ago that all that remains are some rough idea's as to where it actually occured, but the museum at the ancient Citadel of Canne serves its purpose well. You can climb a big hill and look down on the whole valley, there upon imagining the slaughter that occured below. In the space of a day, Hannibals army inflicted near 50, 000 deaths on the Romans, whilst only incurring 6000 deaths on their side. They used what was to become the classic, draw your oppenent to far out onto the battlefield then come around his flanks and butcher him to pieces manoveur - it was to become this move as this is the first time in history that anyone used it- that Hannibal, if only he had some political will he may have been able to turn towards Roma itself after the great battle- unfortunatly the powers that be back in Carthage demurred, and so changed histroy forever (theres a lesson in there for old General Patreaus if you know what I mean)

Anyways, I'm sure you can infer that I was very excited by my visit to Cannae, a top twenty item on the hundred list I was very happy to get the box ticked. I was also very happy that I managed to get it done by about 4 pm, I still had time to blast down to Bari and see if I could get aboard a Ferry to Greece - which is where I am know, I told you I was over Italy. The boat was supposed to sail at 10, and looking out my window (its now 10:38) I think we are still in port, but it seems about ready to leave- so when I wake up I should be in Greece, and the real ancient leg of this trip can begin.