June 6, 2025: Pompeii

Before diving into our June 6 adventures, I thought it would be a good time to share everyone's thoughts on the cruise. 

Sparkle Staircase on MSC Fantasia

Favorite Port Overall

Brian: Acropolis!! That was amazing!

Devri: Acropolis and Istanbul

Leta: Olympia and Ephesus, and I LOVED the beach in Corfu

Kirt/Julie: Athens, Mosques and Cathedrals

Michael: Corfu because of the beach

Rachel: Corfu or Venice

Gabe: Corfu because of the beach

Lara: All of them

Most surprising/unexpected

Brian: Istanbul and Ephesus were both AWESOME, I did not expect to like it as much as I did. I also didn’t expect much from Olympia but that turned into a really awesome excursion as well.

Devri: Ephesus had so much there! Also, how the bottle caps are designed to stay connected to the bottles, how much some of the landscapes look like home

Leta: Total excavation in Ephesus

Kirt/Julie: I was surprised how good the food was, or how gorgeous the mosques were. That they took us to all of these tourist traps (Julie)

Michael: No younglings (no kids on the boat until about halfway through)

Rachel: Bug bites or that I couldn’t use the chat

Gabe: That the ship had an indoor pool 

Least favorite part

Brian: Same food every day, especially for breakfast

Devri: All the cigarette smoke everywhere

Leta: Packing my bag to get off the ship

Kirt/Julie: I can’t think of a least favorite part. My stomach hurting.

Michael: Being bored while on the ship, and sometimes off the ship too

Rachel: Waking up every morning really early or eating the same thing every day

Gabe: Walking all of the time, my feet hurt

Lara: the Grand Bizaare although I’m glad I got to see it

Place you can’t wait to return to

Brian: Athens, Corfu, all of them

Devri: Ephesus—I still feel cheated here

Leta: Greece

Kirt/Julie: Home

Michael: Athens

Rachel: Corfu or Venice

Gabe: Corfu

Lara: Can’t wait to bring my kids to Athens, Olympia, and Ephesus. 

Best tour/guide

Brian: Acropolis or Olympia

Devri: Most informative guide: Giuseppe in Athens, Best at getting us all the places: Ozzie in Istanbul

Leta: Ozzie in Istanbul

Kirt/Julie: Athens and told us all about the Greek statues and history

Michael: Athens

Rachel: Eleaneor, but on the cruise “I don’t know”

Gabe: Corfu again, Parthenon was second

Lara: Athens because the guide let me do my own thing. 

Least favorite tour/guide

Brian: Izmir, though Ephesus was awesome it was so hard to hear or understand the guide, and he didn’t really communicate times to meet very well or the plan so we almost got left behind twice.

Devri: Ephesus itself was awesome, but our tour guide there was awful, and I didn’t like being held hostage at the rug place 

Leta: The guide in Ephesus-he was just not great

Kirt/Julie: Ephesus, because we couldn’t understand the guy

Michael: I don’t know

Rachel: I don’t know

Gabe: Istanbul, just because I had to walk a lot

Lara: The Cave tour because the guy wouldn’t even talk to us and I had to look everything up on google. 

Funniest adventure

Brian: Getting our passports and making it to the train station on time on the disembarkation day.

Devri: Almost losing our tour group in Istanbul and navigating all the traffic and crowds

Leta: Trying to get to the cruise port (he tried to take us to the airport!)

Kirt/Julie: Watching Julie read Cole’s email. 

Michael: Shooting the corn fritter off my plate onto the floor

Rachel: Bad mood, did not want to answer

Gabe: I can’t think of one

Lara: Losing my purse within 2 hours of arriving in Europe. Maybe not funniest, but definitely the biggest adventure! But that wasn’t on the cruise. Funniest is probably ending up in a van for 8 this morning (when it was just Lara and Greg left needing a taxi) Funniest Adventure: Michael sending his corn fritter across the dining room and Michael [attempting to kiss] Greg [for a picture]. 

Biggest difference from a cruise in the USA

Brian: All of the smoking! And the food was very different.

Devri: The utter disregard for no-smoking areas, holding our passports hostage for two days, all the languages and different cultures. Seemed to be more strollers and and a lot less kids.

Leta: More people who didn’t speak languages

Kirt/Julie: All of the different languages and people and smoke

Michael: No young people on the ship

Rachel: How many more people speak different languages

Gabe: That people were getting on and off at different points

(Written on June 8th by Brian)

We woke up before 6am on the day we were departing. Fortunately, we gained an hour so it felt more like it was at 7am. We got ready quickly, went to grab a quick breakfast, and then headed down to guest services area to try to claim our passports. Mom/Nana and Dad/Papa were already there waiting, but the area where we would get passports was still unmanned at 7am or so. I went to go talk to someone at guest services. After talking to someone else initially, I finally got a manager who repeatedly told me that passports would be available at 8. I was extremely persistent and pretty upset at this point since we had called the cruise before even booking the train tickets months earlier and they said we could disembark starting at 7. Finally, she realized I wasn’t going to stop and said she could call immigration after saying, “but if they kill me, I’m going to blame you” (said with a little trepidation and a little smile on her part). I told her I would happily take the blame and to tell them that she had an angry customer she was dealing with. She took down our room numbers (since we were split across 4 rooms) and the immigration people said they would have our passports at the front desk between 7:30-7:40. We felt pretty good about that since we thought we could still make the train with that time. They even got them to us earlier at 7:28 or something, so we finally could head out. Unfortunately, a lot of people had gone up to eat so we had to still wait for everyone to come back down.

You would think the story would be over at that point and we made it fine, but no, the comedy of errors kept piling up. Lara and Greg were not allowed off the ship because they had not “closed their account” before trying to disembark. None of the rest of us had done that either because their letter clearly said that we didn’t have to and our cards would just get charged with whatever was on there, but no matter what they tried they just wouldn’t let them off. The rest of us hurried off to find the taxis, but that was a whole new adventure. In order of least to most favorite, here are our experiences along with their respective awards:

• The driver who parked away from the taxis, and when I went to go ask him if I could get a ride he nodded, turned around, and then promptly passed us while nodding to us the whole time like he was going to pick us up. That was an 8 person van as well so it could have fit most of the group (there were 10 of us). He wins the “I know how to nod but have no idea what it means” award.
• The driver who told dad that “his luggage was too big” and he couldn’t take 4 people, so dad tried to get him to take only 2 people and he just wouldn’t even talk to him anymore. He then proceeded to take 3 people with big luggage the same size as dad’s. He wins the “Karen of the taxis” award.
• The person who was waiting in the taxi line and not where the taxis were actually parked (like we were) who did not see us waiting there long before anyone else and so took a taxi and told us he had been waiting longer. He wins the “always mindful of his surroundings like Batman” award.
• The two drivers that actually took the majority of us - 4 people in each car. They win the “good taxi driver #1” and “does my job right” awards, respectively.
• The taxi driver with an 8 person van who took Lara and Greg who finally made it off the ship, then charged them less than any taxi driver who took us in the smaller cars. He wins both the “5 minutes too late” and “look how roomy this van is with only 2 people in it” awards. Well done.
• The guy who was from Canada that we talked to at the train station that had been on our same cruise who either missed or ignored the request his passport 2 days earlier and never had any problems getting off the boat at all. He wins the “I fought the MSC law and won” award, and we will probably do that next time if we ever do this again.

Finally, we made it to the train station and actually had about 20 minutes to spare. We were able to find our platform and then board the first train. It was a 3 hour ride to Caserta from Bari on a high speed train, then we had to switch trains to go to Naples (Napoli) in about 20 minutes. We found the train just fine, but since it was a regional train, we didn’t have assigned seats and therefore ended up sitting in all different places across a couple of trains and levels, toting our giant bags because there was no space for them either.

Bari Centrale Station

After arriving in Naples, we only had about 35 minutes to stow our luggage and find food. We had pre-booked a luggage storage place only about a 5 minute walk away, then hurriedly grabbed food. All went well until we realized the bathrooms were much more locked down than we thought and the girls bathroom that they chose was having issues. So it turned out that everyone except Rachel, Devri, and Leta were able to go. I’m sure that was fun for them, and we all felt bad, but by that point we were again running to the train. This was another regional one, and it was PACKED. It wasn’t quite as bad as one of the Rome trains we took, but we were definitely crammed in there and only found somewhere to just grab onto a handhold. But, we didn’t have our luggage, so it wasn’t too bad. 

Circumvesuviana Regional Train

We FINALLY arrived in Pompeii at about 2:45pm. That might have been the most stressful morning of travel we’ve had the entire trip, and hopefully the most stressful we’ll have the rest of the time, but that’s what it took to see Pompeii.

We met up with our tour guide, Dario from Tours by Locals, and we were immediately grateful for him as he was extremely knowledgable (I mean, he should be since he’s an archeologist), passionate about preserving and restoring what was lost in Pompeii, and quite funny as well. He wasn’t quite as good about keeping the kids engaged the entire time, but they were great as we walked through the streets of Pompeii.

Near the Porta Marina (Sea Gate) entrance to city

Mount Vesuvius

Dario and Rachel

The Basilica of Pompeii

The Forum

The Forum

Rachel borrowing Dario's umbrella

Mom and Dad had visited Pompeii in the late 90s and I accidentally found a photo of them on Google drive while searching for our tickets to Pompeii. It was an extremely happy accident, so we were able to quickly identify the location and then take an updated photo. Only 25+ years later!

Though I don’t remember this, Lara told me that they brought back a book about Pompeii and she loved looking at it as a kid and always wanted to visit. I wonder if that is where part of my fascination with Pompeii came from as it is a place I’ve always wanted to visit. I would say this was in the top 10 list of things I’ve always dreamed of seeing since I was a kid. The tour was amazing, and though it was originally only scheduled for 2 hours, we ended up doing hours with Dario since he loved talking about things in there so much.

In front of the Temple of Zeus, bunny ears courtesy of Greg

Jupiter's head

Plaster cast of the people caught in the ash

Frescos

Devri told them they shouldn't laugh because these were casts of people who died

The average woman in Pompeii was 5' tall, the average man was 5'5"

Dario introduced the idea of using an umbrella for shade

Going into the Forum Baths

Forum Baths

Massage room of the Men's Bath House

The ceiling fluting helped prevent getting dripped on in the Men's sauna room

Ceiling frescos

Thermopolium (cafe)

Ongoing excavations

"Cave Canem" (beware of the dog) mosaic in the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet

Greg and Gabe discussing the weather on a Pompeii Street

Pompeii crosswalk with modern grates for accessibility

Hitching hole

Gabe climbing the staircase in one of the homes

Blue Steel but in Pompeii

The House of the Faun, the largest and finest house in Pompeii, built in the 3rd to 2nd century B.C. 

Lara and Devri in the House of the Faun

Girls (and boys) just want to have faun

Garden in the House of the Faun

Incredible mosaics are like stone rugs

Pompeii crosswalk near entrance to House of Vettii

House of Vettii

While Devri and I were researching months ago, we had heard some things about the “not so family friendly” parts of Pompeii such as the brothel, etc. We both thought “it can’t be that bad, can it?” Oh no, it’s definitely that bad. Fast forwarding back to our tour, we asked Dario to keep it TV-PG or so. However, there was one house in particular that ended up more TV-14 or even R. I did not see their reactions, but I heard Gabe make a loud, incredulous noise when both him and Rachel had caught sight of this statue/golden fountain.

Gabe at one point even asked “why is it so big!?” I had no words.

Garden in the House of Vettii

[To be fair to Dario, it's really hard to go to Pompeii and NOT see anything inappropriate. He apologized, and I reassured him that it was fine; we just didn't want the things pointed out to them.]

Banquet Room in the House of Vettii

Pistrinum (bakery)

House of Nozze d'Argento-House of the Silver Wedding

House of the Silver Weddings-Atrium

House of the Silver Weddings

Garden planted after Pompeiian design

It was hot and pretty sticky that day, but really the tour was so fascinating that we didn’t really mind. Ok, maybe the kids minded, but the adults definitely didn’t.

Gate back to the Forum

Forum

With Grandma Chadwick

With Nana and Papa

With Everyone! 

With everyone and Dario!

Final look at Pompeii

Mount Vesuvius once again

After the tour was over, we caught the regional train once more, still standing room only though I think Leta was lucky enough to get a seat and Gabe was persistent enough to get a seat on her lap (actually, she offered her lap to Gabe).

Circumvesuviana back to Naples

Naples Centrale Station

We caught our pre-booked 8:30-9:38 train to Rome, found a taxi to our apartment, and finally were able to get to sleep around 11pm. Fortunately for us, we had an early morning [the next day] with a tour at the Colosseum at 8:30am, but that’s a story for another day.