Herculaneum, trains, Eff Google, farms

Directions here in rural so. Italy are impossible. I had to use GPT to correct Google maps, and ask people often. And then you end up here. What is this? Guess. Go on, guess. It's the bloody Herculaneum train station! Zero signs, a couple of bushes disguising it. It's there. No, really. Duck between the bushes. 🙄

Trains in the boonies are a challenge. No signs at stations, or graffiti over them. At night, it was scary to go one stop too far and have to backtrack . (No announcements, goddess knows, not even in Rome). Today, I got left off not at Ercolano Scavi (excavation) but at Ercolano porto (port). On the mediterraneo. A fishing village. 50 minute walk up a slope, and i was close. 2 hour later, Google having run me around in circle even more, i found it. Meh. Here it is. All the good stuff is in Naples Museum. You can walk through there, but no more exciting at ground level. The IDEA of 79 AD is great. It was a lot of walking again today.

Still, i tried to make lemonade out of 🍋 directions. This wall was interesting. It's my thimble full of lemonade. The Greeks owned the coasts before the Romans. Maybe Etruscans got down this far? Then Romans. Then 79 AD and Vesuvius. Next,  hundreds of years of not very wealthy inhabitants, largely fishing folk. Oppressed occasionally by Naples kings and pirates. Anyway, this wall is that history. 

it is greek stuff (like Attic Greeks) patched with pumice bombs, later bricks that might be Renaissance era from their size, two kinds of concrete, one possibly quite old, as Romans had it. Kinda cool. Maybe not 3 extra hours of walking cool, but you're supposed to embrace travel adventures. And the blisters that come with them.

Came back to Pompei via train. As trying to do it logically failed, I grabbed the wrong train headed vaguely south after screaming "a pompeii? Questo Treno va a Pompei?" Into the open door. Nice ladies decided yes, though hesitantly, i thought couldn't be any worse than the last two times. And i made it back. Asked for "something regional that true Italians would eat" in Italian at a carry out place. Talked with the wife, in Italiano, while he cooked, about Sinner and the  Pope (not kidding. It's huge here.) Got food a porta via (carry out) and back to the hotel to eat it. 

The train da Roma a Napoli went through an agricultural region. Looked to be 20 and 40 acre farms. They were growing maybe 20 rows each of crops. Bigger than a big farm's kichen garden but similar philosophy. Healthier for the soil. And 0 chemicals. Healthier for people.We should learn from them.

Basta. Whipped again.