Rome, Pompeii, Salerno and Naples
Over Christmas we had only planned a trip to Rome, because my Aussie friend Tom found that there were cheap train tickets. Then somebody suggested, "Let's visit Pompeii as well!". I finally decided to check the map and realised that Pompeii is quite close to Naples and Salerno, which are where my friend Agostino worked and lived respectively. Never one to miss out on the possibility of seeing some extra cities, I put them onto my itinerary as well. So, on 23rd December, Tom, Wenjing, Han and I set off in our Trenitalia cabin towards Rome. First, the train trip. A 10 hour day train trip is, in practice, much more exhausting and uncomfortable than a 10 hour plane trip, which I was already quite used to. For a start, there are no in-flight videos (don't underestimate its importance!). The person sitting next to you can potentially change at every stop, strange Italian speaking people come into the cabin to tell you why you should shake their hand, toilets don't work ...