Pompeii

Pompeii and Mt Vesuvius.
A city buried under 30 feet of hot mud and ash in AD79.
This was a place I thought I might miss but after talking to several people we decided to hop on the train from Sorrento and go take a look. Well I think we where both pleased we did! The place is hudge, Just imagin finding that!!
What the dicovery of Pompeii has done for understanding daily roman life is increadable To me what I saw roaming the streets was a city with a town planning that would put a lot of places to shame today. The whole place was layed out with drains and sewer and to see what was happening back then on Main street Rome and to think that alot of other places in the world people would have been living in mud huts and rubbing two sticks together to make a fire. The Romans on the other hand where taking baths in centrely heated buildings and even makeing trips to the brothel Yes I saw the sex menus nicley painted on the wall.
If you dome belive me GOOGLE it!
Trev

Summarize Italy

Our Route: Como Lake area we stayed in a quaint town that you have to get to by Ferry called Varenna, loved it! If had more time would have gone further north, it is a very pretty area up around there.

Rode to Verona another nice but bigger town, great stopping point before heading onto Venice, fab shopping.

Stayed outside of Venice in a great little Hotel called Hotel Paris, cool safe place for the bike to be while we explored Venice, amazing! Venice is everything you imagine and because it was cool there but sunny we didn’t have to deal with the smells everyone talks about.

Rode south thru Parma and onto Cinque Terre, this is the five villages where you can hike between each one, very nice also, definitely a do not miss. Even the ride thru the mountains was very pretty.

Lunch stop in Pisa to check out the tower, don’t think Pisa needs any more time than that, and then onto Florence had one of our best meals here with a great Italian waiter who was very knowledgable.

Stopped one night in Sienna, then Rome, we had lots of fun in Rome albeit that our feet hurt from walking and Rome has so many steps but lots of interesting things to see.

Sorrento and the Almalfi Coast, fun town and scenic rides on the bike here.

Over to Bari on the highway, boring ride to catch the ferry to Greece.

Food:Expensive unless you want pizza for $5-9euro or basic pasta for the same price, wine $5.00/glass if you bought a bottle from the store its cheap $3. And up. Beer was expensive to drink out about $8euro a pint. Otherwise for a nice pasta or fish meals were around $15euros and up closer to $20 each.

Gas prices were around $1.35 - $1.40 euro a litre.

Weather in Italy was rainy for this time of year we definitely should have come a month earlier, we even saw snow in Lake Como on the mountains and temps in the 10degrees, cold, glad i have the heated vest.

People: Id have to say that its harder to communicate with the Italian language rather than the French or Spanish, they talk a lot and especially with their hands on the whole most have been pretty friendly but we got the feeling that the seasons over so they don’t have to be so polite!! Receptionist in Sorrento hotel was very helpful and friendly we enjoyed our stay there.

One thing that still goes on in Europe that neither of us can cope with is the SMOKING!! our lungs will surely appreciate the cleaner air of Canada when they get home in a year. Everyone still smokes in Europe, in all the public places and the hotel rooms etc. its gross.