Day 7 Thursday 28 June (Naples)

The day started rather ominously, I was fine when I woke up this morning, but during breakfast had a couple of horrible waves of nausea, which was rather disturbing as we had a full day planned today!  I left the boat feeling rather nervous!

We found the port at Naples to be a bit confusing; the private tour operators were not waiting with all the big tour buses as they usually are, but eventually we figured out that we had to walk through a bit of a shopping mall to a different parking lot where all the private tour operators were waiting for us.

Our guide for the day was Nicholas, he turned out to be an excellent driver, but not as chatty and friendly as our previous drivers.  Quite honestly this turned out to be a good thing as, after a hectic couple of days, we were all quite keen to just sit back and enjoy the ride today!

 After consulting with Nicholas we decided that our plan would be to head to Positano first.  The drive there was amazing – such views!  The Amalfi Coast is really, really beautiful, you drive along high up on the cliffs and look down on this blue, blue, crystal clear sea – you can see right down to the pebbles and rocks on the ocean floor. 

Positano far exceeded my expectations.  It is so different to any place I have ever seen before.  The village is built on the steepest cliff-face, all the way down to the beach.  The houses are literally one on top of each other! 

The shops in Positano were wonderful – 100s of cute little shops tucked in the alleys.  A lot of the shops were really up-market – divine clothes, but my soul, the prices!!   The curio shops were well priced though, so we stocked up on some gifts.  We walked all the way down to the beach and the view from the beach up the village was incredible. 

We then drove to Sorrento.  I loved Sorrento too.  It’s not quite as unique as Positano, but it was pretty and had a lovely atmosphere.  We took the train around town , which was a lovely way to see all the best bits in a short space of time. 

Our driver had made a lunch booking for us at a very nice restaurant. 

They fed us exceedingly well and gave us an after-lunch limoncello too! I am convinced that limoncello should be taken after every meal – my tummy had been threatening horrible things all morning, but after the limoncello it was beaten into submission and behaved perfectly respectably for the rest of the day.

After lunch we set off for Pompeii. 

The plan was to have a fairly quick visit to Pompeii as we were all feeling quite exhausted and it was an extremely hot day.  Quite frankly, my personal mission was to see only the brothel, some dead people and the stray dogs – don’t judge me, I’m just a real pleb sometimes!

Our visit turned out nothing like we expected at all! We didn’t hire a tour-guide, I mean how would we explain to a decent tour-guide that we only want to see the brothel and a bunch of dead guys?? So we bought a large and unwieldy map and tried to do it alone. 

We wandered for a bit, saw some impressive ruins and a few heart-wrenching corpses (I found it rather more emotional than I had been expecting) and then just when things were getting interesting Grant fell dramatically off a step! 

One moment he was standing next to me analysing the map while I admired a gorgeous stray dog (Pompeii is known for its stray dogs) and next thing he was lying on the floor a few metres away.  For one heart-stopping moment I thought he had had a heart-attack!  We got him up on his feet and he had cut his hand really badly on a sharp stone, he was bleeding, rather impressively all over the place (thanks no doubt to his blood thinning injections), it was horrible!  The lady who worked in the shop where we had just bought water was very sweet and brought water, serviettes and ice and a couple of kind tourists came to help us too; one of them, a trained paramedic, advised us to get him to our ships doctor asap. 

So we set off to find our driver…easier said than done!  The road leading to the exit was choked with tourists, but it’s amazing what the words “Try not to bleed all over these people Grant” said loudly, in a South African accent, can do – you never saw a bunch of people scatter so fast!  Reminded me of Moses at the Red Sea.  On seeing our problem a very sweet American lady gave us some anti-bacterial wipes and great big plasters, which were a huge help, and we continued on our way. 

What a mission we had finding our driver as we came out the wrong exit and walked about 100 miles before we found our way to the meeting point.  Thankfully, although we were about an hour early, Nicholas was sitting in the car, so we were able to get straight in and set off for the harbour.

I would rather Grant hadn’t been hurt, but I must admit it was fascinating to see the medical facilities on board!  They have a full-on casualty ward down on deck 1 with a receptionist, a couple of nurses and a doctor! 

A nurse cleaned Grant up and then the doctor came and stitched him up.  Another nurse then came to do the dressing on Grant’s hand and she turned out to be from Shelly Beach too!  We had a really interesting chat to her about life on board.  Fascinating.

By this time Grant and I were in dire need of a shower!  We managed to get Grant in and out of the shower without wetting his bandaged hand, which was no mean feat!  Once freshened up we went for an early dinner at Windjammers.  It was quite nice to have some alone time, just the two of us.  After supper we went to watch Saturday Night Fever, which wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but was very good, especially the guy in the lead role. 

Then it was back to our cabin for an early night.  Exhaustion had set in, big-time!  This cute little guy was waiting in our cabin to greet us!