Beauty and the Beard:
Bound to Wander

Day 41 was a day of adventure, excitement, and danger! A guided tour around Pompeii followed by a hike up Mt. Vesuvius. Alright, it wasn't that dangerous, but it was exciting and a kind of adventurous. Vesuvius is an active volcano. It could blow at any minute. Since we had to prepare for a hike, we woke up earlier than usual. ( we only wake up early when we've paid for stuff ) We walked into the breakfast room excited to try our hotel's free breakfast, but all we found was some rock hard bread and a few sticky croissants. For drinks they had orange juice that was more sugar than liquid and a pink juice with a fly floating in it. This sugary breakfast is not what we needed before a hike. We also had no snacks. We quickly made 4 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and packed a bag of cereal. This tour supposedly provided pizza for lunch, but we get hangry too easily. We had given ourselves enough time to grab some snacks before our guide was supposed to pick us up, but we ...

This morning began just fine. We woke up, checked out late without a late fee, and ate cereal in the common area. It was a quick metro ride to the Termini station, and we would be arriving an hour early for our train so we were in no rush. Our first afternoon here was spent waiting in line for information about the train, and we used that information to formulate a plan. With train times written on a post-it note, and those times designated as "free" or "reservation required", we headed for the timetables to determine which platform we'd fine our 11:26 train. We found no such information. Instead, we found 11:06 and 11:25 trains. Neither of which matched the times on the post-it. We were baffled. One of those trains would require a reservation that we didn't have and there wasn't enough time to go stand in the slowest information line ever. We decided to head for the 11:06 train and ask someone if it required a reservation. If not, we'd hop on. Imm...