Days 142 to 146 : 3rd to 7th November 2017 Visitors, Pompeii and Paesteum

Friday: Pompeii

We woke reasonably early as Leonie and Ross were arriving at about 10am to dump their bags before we headed off to Pompeii.  I wanted the boat tidy by at least our standards, and for us all to be ready to go including having a packed lunch made....we had some misguided ideas about visiting Herculaneum as well!

After a quick turnaround we were on our way to the Station where Leonie and Ross introduced us to the complexities of Italian Rail travel which we found to be extremely efficient and cheap. On exiting the station at Pompeii we ran the gauntlet of all the guides, taxis and ticket touts trying to extract Euros from us and instead followed the crowd to walk to the ruins. AJ was a little over awed by the hustle and bustle after so long in quiet coastal towns but once we arrived he was fine.

We were all impressed by the amphitheatre. AJ even made a tellagami about it, you can view it here but I think you can only view it on a tablet or phone.

As we wandered around the streets of Pompeii I was amazed at how engaged the kids were. Like when we had read living books prior to visiting Pegasus Bridge, the kids had prior knowledge of Pompeii both from books and from BBC documentaries I had downloaded from YouTube so that the kids could watch them during travelling days. This really helped their engagement with the site, and I was both surprised and delighted when AJ pointed out what had been a pool in the entrance to one of the houses, saying he knew what this was and that there would have been a hole in the roof to allow it to fill with water. The scale of the site and it's completeness amazed me and although Herculaneum is supposed to be better in terms of what has been preserved I was completely blown away by Pompeii.

The kids had a great time running around the ruins and role playing in the street food shops and when, on occasion, the adults wanted to linger a little longer than the kids we were more than happy to let them chill out with electronic devices.

After a while we were all tired and hungry so took a break for a picnic lunch where the kids fooled around with Ross who was a great hit! We had some great conversations, including debating whether all of this stone fountain was old and why!

At the end we also spent time thinking about the poor people who died in 79 AD. AJ had been a bit unsure of visiting because of how sad it was so I'm glad this conversation was kept until the end so that he could spend time appreciating how Romans lived as well as learning of their ultimate fate.

Saturday

A pre dawn start as we had about 50 miles to go to Agropoli. Leonie and Ross were both tired but wanted to take photos of the sunrise so we agreed I'd wake them when we could see first light. It started off as a normal day, motoring out of the marina in the dark and as usual motoring as there was too little wind/wind in the wrong direction to sail. As requested I woke our guests and they enjoyed taking photos as the day dawned, followed by breakfast with the clan.

Travel day boatschool started with musical times tables and Esmé getting out the instruments.

AJ spent some of his downtime designing and building a lego plane which he explained was to scoop spilled oil out of the sea and recycle it for use on land.

By mid morning we were passing between Capri and the mainland, with photographers both taking stunning photographs.

It was then that the sea began to change and we encountered steep choppy waves which were both uncomfortable and reduced our speed from our usual 5.5 knots to less than 4 knots. AJ was completely in panic mode and a couple of us were a little green around the gills. Esmé however was suitably distracted by the prospect of "surfing" the waves, clipped on, stood on the seats and holding onto the sprayhood with the wind in her hair! She even requested her nails painted despite our protests that it might be better waiting until we were more stable! As our progress slowed, we realised that the motion was much better heading along the Amalfi coast towards Salerno so we diverted. An hour or so later things calmed down and again we changed direction, this time for our original destination of Agropoli. It was like a different day again, very soon we had sails up and enjoyed the best sail of our trip yet.

On arrival at Agropoli we were met by the guy we had been emailing waving us over to his pontoon. He pointed to a tiny gap which I attempted to reverse into... not a bad effort but the gap was so small we had to push the other boats out of the way to get in. Once tied up we realised that the passerelle would clash with the electricity feeder pillar. The guy was none too pleased and wanted us to move. The first place he suggested would have been impossible with our prop kick so we negotiated and I managed another successful stern to mooring. 

As we were finishing tying up Esmé had other things on her mind and our cockpit table soon became a nail salon!

After a brief tidy up, and the discovery that the land based showers were closed, we all took turns to shower on Laurin which is tricky when it's not just family as there is no space to put dry clothes in the heads compartment. We finally came up with the solution of non shower participants chilling out in the cockpit tent with the hatch shut and a towel over the Perspex so that whoever was having a shower could have some privacy below. It worked quite well and I think the shower wasn't quite as bad as our guests anticipated.

Out we went for a lovely meal courtesy of our guests which was a rare treat in a very nice restaurant overlooking the harbour.

Sunday

Today we headed to Paesteum, which is a site of Roman ruins and Greek temples. The first challenge was to find either a bus stop or the train station. It was quite a hike for either and we never did find the bus stop. Once on the train it was a quick ride to Peasteum and then a short walk up a country lane to the site which was really impressive.

We spent a good couple of hours exploring the ruins and hunting for lizards in glorious sunshine. As it was the first Sunday in the month, entry was free so it was quite busy. Our photographer friends liked to get photos without people in so we got into a routine of taking photos of the kids in front of a ruin (people understood this and got out of the way) then getting the kids to run out of shot so that we could take photos without people!

 

We then had a pleasant and cheap pizza lunch at one of the tourist restaurants near by before heading back via the Gelato café in Agropoli which was enjoyed by all.

More photo opportunities followed by Esmé and Leonie glitter glueing the pinecone Esmé had collected before a "picky" dinner in front of Harry Potter!

Monday

Leonie and Ross were due to leave today but they kindly stuck around and helped a little with boatschool. It was a bit of a shock to the system as it was the first time we had done full boatschool in  a while. It wasn't without problems but we made a start in getting back into a routine and both kids enjoyed learning about photo editing.

 After and early lunch we all walked up into town where AJ and I said our goodbyes to our guests and went food shopping while Patrick and Esmé walked up to the station with them to help with bags. We returned to the boat with groceries and then chilled out while a storm rages all around us. It was pretty uncomfortable on the boat and tempers were frayed well before bedtime.

Tuesday

A fresh start, too wet and windy to sail but a good morning of boat school and Patrick managed to get the Laundry done although the dryer wasn't quite as efficient as we'd hoped so the boat looked like a Chinese laundry as we turned up the chillies and tried to finally get sheets dry.

It rained pretty much all day on and off so I didn't even leave the boat. Watching the weather forecast, trying to judge what is an acceptable amount of swell, waves and wind is getting tiring so we reached out to our Facebook friends and hopefully have some new crew coming to meet us in Vibo Valentia to help out and raise spirits! Hopefully onwards tomorrow if the wind dies down as promised, otherwise probably Thursday!

All the good photos courtesy of Leonie & Ross!