A stroll down Abbondanza...

It was the 11th of October, and after the long and cold two weeks apart, me and Lee reunited in the quaint town of Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre. I waited outside the station, night had struck and the coastal winds were taking their toll. Until finally, the large black backpack appeared amidst the sea of strangers. My heart leaped. She continued walking, unaware of her estranged friend's casual yet excited waves, until finally our eyes met. We smiled, hugged and cried, all the while sharing stories of our solo adventures and reunited our separated lives.
After a pasta dinner and a moonlight stoll through the deserted and humble streets, passing many cats, guarding their doors like stone lions overlooking the royal castle, we lay our heads on our pillows as dreams whisked us away.
So anyway..
The next morning we woke up early to do the hike through the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We woke up so impressively early that the pizza shops weren't open and we had to go to 2nd town, Manarola without breakfast. But never fear! as Manarola was only a 10 minute stroll down the Via della Amore.

After snacking in Manarola and wondering around the town we took the train to Corniglia as the path was closed.Corniglia was incredibly cute and smaller then the other towns. By smaller we mean less opportunities to buy food. But we still managed to stock up on water and snacks for the next hour and a half hike to the next town, Vernazza.
Vernazza was the town that Google image promised to be the most adorable so we were understandably very excited. The hike there was so pretty that we had to stop every 10 metres to take postcardworthy photos.

Vernazza was probably the most lively of the towns, but this may have been because it was lunchtime. So we ate way too much foccacia and quiche by the port, and searched for cats in cute places. We also developed another theory that there were people whos entire job consisted of 'cuteifying' the towns in Cinque Terre, this included startegically placing cats to be adorable. Dont worry, we have photos.

The final town was Monterosso, and it was about a 2 hour hike there. Luckily we chose the right direction to go in because the people walking the other way looked like they were crying. But it was so pretty!
Monterosso was the biggest town, we rewarded ourseles with icecream/Sprite. Apparently we were "omg so pretty I must take a photo"'d out because neither of us took any photos but instead I will put a bridge photo.

We went to Back to our hostel in Riomaggiore to make a fancy dinner of pasta with eggplant. We spent the night chilling with the other people in the hostel (which was really cute except that the owners fanatical stuffing of beds in the apartment lead to a bunk bed in the kitchen).

We woke up at 4.30am to catch the train to Naples (the joys of Eurail) and spent 7 hours on the train.
We spent the afternoon in the History museum which pretty much consisted of about 3 hour of Nell sqweeling and running to differnt staues and artifacts which related to Pompei.
and I learnt some kinky stuff about anicent civilisations.

That night we walked around the city centre and ate true napolitana Pizza

We woke up that morning to crappy overcaste and rainy weather and decided that in mental preperation for Pompei we would spend the whole day coffee shop hopping and we sqeezed in some sight seeing on the way like the Castel Nuovo were we got our bridge photo

POMPEI!
So we woke up, got very excited, then headed towards the 66 uncovered hectares of Pompei. When we got to the modern city of Pompei, we wondered around for a while until we finally got the courage to ask someone directions to the Pompei ruins. First we saw the Great Theatre. Having a capacity of 5000, it was very large and almost completely reconstructed, which makes one ponder, does it destroy the integrity of the remains?

Okay Im going to try and not give a virtual tour of everything we did because it will be really boring. So just highlights. Oh but theyre all highlights! Just the main, main things. Next we found the Via dell Abbondanza, the main road (decumani) of Pompei. I told Lee of the stepping stones and she was very impressed.

We passed some thermopolia (ancient take away food places) which I squealed at for a while and lee sat on

We went to the Forum and saw the Building of Eumachia, the Macellum, the Mensa Ponderaria, the Basilica etc. and walked around and passed the House of the Tragic Poet, a couple bakeries, the Fullery of Stephanus and the Forum Baths. Along the way we discussed the ethical issues involved in the study and display of human remains.

I also got very excited about the ancient graffiti and Lee asked me to explain the ancient significance of 'PIE' that was graffitied on another wall.

Last we went to the palaestra and the Amphitheatre where we (very historically accurately) posed as gladiators.

It was time to leave, but although leaving Pompei was devastating, we were leaving for Rome to meet up with the lovely Caitie.

On a separate note, if anyone is interested in more photos of cats in astonishingly cute places, please enquire.