TRAVEL: How we managed a Day Trip to Pompeii and Herculaneum from Rome

I took my teenage daughter to Rome in August 2014, and one of the things she most wanted to do, after visiting The Colosseum and The Vatican, was to go to Pompeii and Herculaneum.  I was pretty sure there'd be trips to Pompeii available from Rome, but was doubtful they would include Herculaneum.  I promised to look into it, and did some internet research before we set off.

This blog from 2010 was a great help. How to Visit Pompeii and Herculaneum in One Day Without a Tour by Jessica. It helped me to navigate Napoli Centrale Railway Station. Now all I had to do was fit it in with a trip from Rome first.  It went like this:

As you leave Roma Termini, you can see the vast
ruins of the aquaduct that supplied the city.

The evening before, I studied the railway times from Roma Termini (the main railway station in Rome).  Napoli is written in red, as a principal station, which helped.  I decided to pay more (double!) for a ticket on the IC (inter-city) fast train from Rome, on which everyone has a designated seat. To do this, just go to the automatic ticket points and select the national flag on the screen that represents your language. There are card, note and coin slots and it's well guided.  I chose a slow train for the return journey, as our hotel was quite close to the station, also to save money, and because you can catch any AR train before midnight (bear in mind that you can't get on an IC train with an AR-regular train ticket). We set off at around 7am as the fast train still takes two hours.  Check the ultimate destination of the train; Napoli Centrale is not a terminus, and they often go through to Sorrento. This will help you to find the right train along Roma's 20 platforms!

Once at Napoli Centrali you need to switch to the Circumvesuviana line (a local service). To do this, you go down two levels to the Circumvesuviana station "Napoli Garibaldi" where you can buy return tickets to Pompei Scavi station (Scavi means excavations).  It can take an hour to get to Pompeii. Now, Herculaneum is on the same line, at an earlier stop.  We couldn't make ourselves understood when asking whether we could break the journey at Herculaneum, so we decided to do Pompeii first, then take the line back to Herculaneum (the stop for Herculaneum is called Ercolano, or Ercolano Scavi, depending which window you look out of). That way, if our ticket got swallowed at Ercolano, we could just buy another for the remainder of the journey back to Napoli. (This wasn't tested, as there were open, unmanned gates at the station where we didn't need to use our tickets.)

Traffic Calming and pedestrian
crossing all-in-one at Pompeii

We got off at Pompeii, and immediately saw a huge sign saying TICKET OFFICE.  It was not the main Pompeii ticket office, but one of those guided tour ones so we ignored it.  We found the site entrance and official ticket office a few yards down the hill, and joined the long queue (should've got up earlier; I noticed it was open from 08:30).  Tickets are €11 in 2014, or €20 for all 5 sites (I never knew about the other three!). Under-25s get a discount, so take some ID if this applies.  It is no cheaper at Herculaneum, so if you're sure you will be visiting there, get the €20 ticket.

Vesuvius overshadows the ruins

It takes literally hours to walk all around the site, and it's a good idea to be as well informed as possible when you do so (eg: audio-guide you can rent at the gate, the free map you get on entry - they do run out of English ones, but a map's a map - and researching it all beforehand).  There are plenty of water fountains where you can top up your drinking water, so hold on to your bottle. A picnic is a good idea, as all the food places are outside the site - most of them outside the exit (from which turn right and walk up the hill to return to the Circumvesuviana).  Leave yourself at least an hour for the smaller Herculaneum site, and another hour to get there, in case you're unlucky with train times; Remembering that you also have to get back to Napoli Centrale for your train back to Rome (you must be back in Rome the same day or your ticket becomes invalid).

Overhead info at main railway stations. Check whether 

it's for arrivals or departures, then it gives the name

of the other station, the scheduled time, minutes late, 

(where applicable) and platform number.

Herculaneum, from the approach path

When you get off the Circumvesuviana at Ercolano Scavi, you leave the station by a steep set of stairs that lead onto the streets of modern Ercolano. Just head downhill. The signs say the excavations are 500m away, but that's not strictly true. You get to the main gate by then, but there's another 500m before you reach the ticket office (however, the path looks over the site and you can get some superb photographs from above). The steep walls of the town on the seaward side used to be where the sea came up to - before the eruption of Vesuvius.

Just retrace your steps back up the hill after your visit (the steps are somewhat off to the right - I say this because I forgot!) to catch the Circumvesuviana in the same direction you were travelling when you got off, back to Napoli Garibaldi and the main Napoli Centrale station, where you catch your train back to Rome.  The AR trains are double-deckers, and we had no trouble finding a seat as we arrived well after the rush hour.  For this journey, I would have a good book, some music or a download to watch; especially if you're on the AR train and not the IC!

One more thing; you don't have time to walk up Vesuvius on this schedule.

Enjoy your trip!

You can see the island of Capri from the main

line and the Circumvesuviana.

The World Cup and the War against Women.

My soccer-fan husband makes sure that The World Cup is unavoidable in our home; that's the men's tournament, for those who've managed to avoid it.  The women's tournament is next year - in Canada.  Also this month, The Wimbledon Tennis Championship takes place, and both male and female players will converge on London for the same tournament.  What difference does the segregation of football tournaments, or the integration in tennis championships, make?

Alongside the vital news of which World Cup football player has managed to kick their ball into the net most times, the rest of the world news is showing more and more how there is a worldwide undercurrent of disregard of, or disrespect for women and their human rights. This can be manifested in the relatively minor inconvenience of being barred from certain jobs, or from driving motor vehicles, or enforced dress codes; through the life-changing denial of rights such as equal access to education, then whether or who to marry and genital mutilation.  

Unicef report "Women in an Insecure World" pdf

Western news outlets like the BBC report on the worst manifestations of cultural violations of women. They interview politicians and activists who plead that more needs to be done. They rush their cameras to the female anti-rape protest groups and to the rich and famous who add their voices and their presence to the coal-face of abuse.

More locally, where abuse of women is frowned upon, the BBC, when short of exciting news to report, has run items on overweight teenage girls, or campaigns to get girls more engaged in sport. 

Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation: Changing the Game for Girls. pdf

Yet, the BBC sees no irony whatsoever in following this with a sports roundup consisting entirely of the triumphs and woes of male football, rugby, cricket and golf tournaments and male personality trophy events such as Footballer of the Year (note the absence of the word 'male' in that title). This week, the news has reported that girls don't want to get sweaty because it's unladylike or not 'cool'. After all, when do they ever see a sweaty female role model engaging in a sporting activity on prime time TV (OK, apart from Wimbledon!)? 

WSFF.org.uk     

The message the broadcasters are sending to our own hearts and minds, when they glorify male sport and male achievement and exclude those of their female counterparts, is this: WOMEN DON'T MATTER.  IF YOU ARE A WOMAN; YOU DON'T MATTER EITHER.  This message is amplified around the world. Instead of challenging the segregation of sports, we turn up with our cameras, commentators and crowds to celebrate each male-glorifying event.  

The successful integration of the sexes in tennis shows that there is no shortage of support for the female sections of the sport and that, given enough air time, women can be as famous and financially successful as the men.  If the current soccer World Cup had scheduled women's matches alongside the men's, the fans would turn up to watch both; and would stay until their last team, male or female, had left the tournament, as they did for the London 2012 Olympics.

Summit on Women's Football. Etihad Stadium

So, why am I mixing together the messages of sport and human rights?  Because we are still guilty of sidelining women; of not giving them an fair slice of the cake. We send our men, not our women, to Brazil to face the scrutiny of the world on a great sporting stage. We broadcast the achievements of our men, not our women, on the sports round up on television, unless briefly reporting on the closing stages of a major women's tournament. When women reach the top of their sport, they are abused for their looks, or even just for being a success, on social media sites like Twitter. In short, there's still a plank in our own eye, while we are advising the world to remove the splinters from theirs.  We're all blind to the worldwide, sometimes subtle, oppression of women.  

Beth Tweddle and Eugenie Bouchard: Women deserve better

No wonder we are still catching people at Heathrow armed with genital mutilation kits. No wonder girls are still being taken "on holiday" to be married off to strangers or operated on. No wonder girls in British schools are having their education subtly marginalised in the name of religion.  Until we get our own house in order, and treat girls and women equally IN ALL AREAS OF LIFE, our moral high ground will always be a slippery slope that we will never get to the top of.  This starts with our own national broadcaster, the BBC - paid for with a tax on all television sets - giving equal status to all licence fee payers, not just by lip service in general news items, but in their broadcast of all sports.  They should be monitoring, by gender of teams and individuals, the air time given to sports coverage.  I'm monitoring it, and to date, BBC, you fail; big time.

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