As a Cynic Sees It: What a Traveler Needs Most

Yesterday was a tremendous day. Ransom and I signed up for a ship's excursion to Herculaneum. That deserves a bit of elaboration. In 1977, aboard the QE2, Don and I took a shore excursion -- to a voodoo ceremony in Haiti! It was intense and weird and climaxed with the death of a blood-spurting chicken whose head had been bitten off by one of the ceremony's participants. Truth, I swear.

At any rate, in all the years since I have never booked another shore excursion. It wasn't the blood I feared; scarier was the idea of getting on a bus, waiting for stragglers, driving too long through too much traffic and then being herded around like so many sheep with a camera around my neck and a ship's number on my chest, straining to hear the tour guide. I'd rather ride local transit, walk, or, if it's too far for that, take a cab. That has stood me well for the intervening thirty-seven years.

But I'm older, Herculaneum was far enough away from the port, and the price, compared to getting ourselves there and paying our own admission, seemed fair. So we took the tour.

It was well worth it. Wikipedia's article on Herculaneum says it is "famous as one of the few ancient cities that can now be seen in almost its original splendor; unlike Pompeii, it was buried deeply enough to preserve the upper stories of buildings. Additionally, the hotter ash preserved wooden household objects such as beds, doors, and even food. Moreover, Herculaneum was a wealthier town than Pompeii, possessing an extraordinary density of fine houses, and far more lavish use of colored marble cladding."

I found most of the above to be true -- Herculaneum was buried mostly by super-heated mud, not ash -- and was fascinated by our visit, but, more than anything, I then wanted to see Pompeii as well. So as Ransom went back aboard Equinox, I bought a ticket on the pier for the afternoon tour to Pompeii.

Am I ever glad I did. I have heard from many that Herculaneum was more interesting than Pompeii. That may be true from a scholar's point of view, but as a garden variety tourist I was blown away by Pompeii. The site is so much larger than Herculaneum and the sense of loss so much greater. My tour guide was as intelligent and well-spoken as he was attractive and, better still, he used miniature radios to communicate with us: whatever he said we heard via earpieces. It was a wonderful tour and though I came back from the very long day exhausted and in pain, I was so, so glad to have done both adventures.

Pompeii is of course a World Heritage Site, and deservedly so.

As for the subject of this post: what a tourist needs most is flexibility. I only made it to Pompeii because I decided at the last minute to change plans and go with my heart.

Passengers aboard this ship need that same flexibility today. As luck would have it, there's a national one-day train strike; we are docked in Civitavecchia, the port for Rome, but in fact an hour and-a-half drive from Rome. Many passengers no doubt planned to take a local bus or train into Roma; that has just been made intensely more difficult. With no trains running, the auto traffic, always excessive, will be even worse. It is my prediction that our departure from Civitavecchia will be delayed tonight as we await returning excursion buses. Folks onboard those buses need to relax and be flexible.

Ransom and I are doing both . . . on ship.