I got into Rome at like 7pm and Camille did not– she thought she had booked the same flight as me but hers was a few hours later. I got some food, dropped off my laundry, and got gelato with Taylor and Claire, catching up with them for a while. When I got the Airbnb, I had lost the key card (embarrassing!) but the hosts were able to let me in remotely. Camille was supposed to get to the Airbnb at like 2am so I left the door unlocked but closed, turned up my phone volume up, and went to bed at like 1am. At 2am my phone started ringing and a destressed Camille told me she had taken a bad taxi, was at some random hotel, and would I please come pick her up. I got up, went and got her. Apparently at the airport some guy pretended to be a taxi so he could get double the flat fare. Camille and another girl got in, he drove like a maniac, and eventually they both went to the other girls hotel where they were able to get their bags and get away from him– there was some “kerfuffle” as Camille put it. We went to bed and then were up at 7 the next morning to meet Taylor and Claire (morning people) to take the train to Pompeii.

It was insanely hot and Camille and I were operating on 4 hours of sleep or less. We walked 12 miles that day. Pompeii was very cool though– the art on the walls was incredible. We wandered through the city center, the brothel, the houses, saw the water system with their lead pipes (turns out, when the barbarians attacked the romans they were all sick with lead poisoning!), and their dog mosaics. We tried to find bodies but there weren’t very many around and in the end it was plenty– it was much more emotionally impactive. People frozen in time and the moment of their death, it was so invasive to seem them, so tragic, so personal.

After Pompeii we went to Naples which was kinda grimy, not sure what we missed there but it was not a nice city. We got back to Rome, got dinner at an incredible Indian place, and then walked to the Colosseum. It is so much bigger and more impressive than in pictures. There was a rat by where we were sitting, probably a few actually, that kind of messed with the ambiance.

Taylor and Claire had already been there for a few days and done the Vatican and Colosseum tours so I knew if I hung out with them, I wouldn’t be doing those things– in fact I considered skipping Pompeii and doing those things instead– but I decided I just wanted to hang out with them, Ill go back to Rome.