Pompeii and Herculaneum

17th – 18th July 2018

We had a beautiful chilled out day at two amazingly gorgeous villages called Castellabate and Santa Maria di Castellabate – I cannot explain how fabulous these villages are – so unspoilt and quiet – if you like to be away from it all then the Cilento Coast is the place to go.  But the highlight of today was eating at Casale Giancesare – Antonino and Jonny cooked for us and it was absolutely fantastic – all home grown vegetables, Buffalo Mozzarella  was out of this world – and it was lots of tasters of different local dishes – I wish I had taken photos of the food – it not only tasted amazing but it looked amazing too – if they had been cooking every night we would have eaten there every night – it was soooo good.  If you ever want to go to Southern Italy and stay on the Cilento Coast then I can highly recommend Casale Giancesare – get in touch with Antonino – he is absolutely a fantastic host and cannot do enough for you – he will tell you fabulous places to eat and the best places to visit and he, his father Enzo and Jonny all make you feel very much at home – can’t sing their praises enough.

Next day we went to Pompeii – it’s huge and amazing and unbelievable and if you’re in Italy you have to go see it – my words could not do it justice so I’ll just put some pictures on – there’s so much to see so you need at least 2-3 hours, plenty of water, sunscreen and comfy shoes.  We were going to have the audio guide but at the entrance we went in they didn’t do it (they have 3 entrances) – I think it would have been better to have a guide or the audio guide.  It was a very short queue and I think it cost about 10 euros (but it’s free on the first sunday of the month).

You really don’t get a sense of how big and amazing it is from these photos – you need to go see for yourself.

We then visited Herculaneum, it’s a lot smaller than Pompeii but just as fascinating.  I think I enjoyed it more here – we did have the audio guide here which probably made it a bit better – but it was less crowded, no queue to get in here either.  We loved it but I have to admit that we probably only looked around about half of it properly – and by then our feet were aching and we were ready for a drink and something to eat.

Herculaneum is fantastic – a lot of it is still buried under the existing city – we just felt we got more of a sense of what life was like here than we did in Pompeii – however, having said that – Pompeii is absolutely a tick off the bucket list – just go to both.

We went back to Caffe Centrale tonight – this restaurant is fab – we shared the antipasti and then both had steak – delicious.  Antonino recommended this restaurant to us – so thanks Antonino – you’re the best!

Cheers and thanks for looking at my blog – very happy and excited to have the hit the  total of 20 followers!!