Pompeii and falling down the stairs

We went to Pompeii in the morning, but not without a few problems on the way. We were lucky enough to have Luigi's son Ugo drive us in the Ducato to the train station in Sant'Angelo (the town nearest to the B&B) which let us get there without having to worry about parking.

After Renee, Dad and I found a working ATM (the nearest one was "fuori servizio") to take out some cash, we went up the steps to the Circumvesuviana tracks. I bought two round trip tickets, followed by dad buying two, Renee buying five, and Dylan attempting to buy two. By the time he got there, the ticket guy was out of change. And they did not take credit cards. And some woman cut in front of Dylan while he was trying to find the exact change from one of us.

Of course, that led to us missing the train. I asked the guy in the booth when the next one was, and he told me, in Italian, that the next one was at 11:39 AM. That was about another half hour wait. I told everyone how long we'd have to wait, but everyone had to confirm what I told them by asking the ticket guy directly. He spoke enough English to say "eleven thirty-nine." That was about all the English I think he had.

We managed to catch the 11:39, and got to the "Pompeii Scavi" station around 12:15 or so. We stopped at place to grab a quick bite to eat near the station, and someone asked us if we wanted a tour guide. He offered a pretty good deal - all eleven of us for 96 Euros - but we'd each have to pay the entrance fee of 11 Euros per person ourselves.

After a fair bit of debate, we finally decided to get the tour guide. I'm really glad we did. Vincenzo, who called himself Vinnie for us Americans, gave us a great tour. Very informative, and he explained how Pompeii fit within the context of the Roman Empire at the time of its destruction.

After our tour, we got back onto the train, and took it to the Sorrento station, which is one stop past our stop at Sant'Angelo. This was because our plan was to hop on the bus to go to the Amalfi Coast.

However, fate had another idea for us. Jan was trying to take a picture of some really beautiful bougainvillea that was growing on a wall opposite the train station. As she was walking down the staircase, she lost her footing and fell, landing on her back. Her head hit the ground, and she started bleeding all over the place.

It was really scary. I was so glad that Paige was there, who was able to keep everyone calm while he had her sit down so he could look at the back of her head. And there was this very nice American woman who offered us a bunch of napkins, and ran to her backpack to grab a bandanna to sop up the blood. About a half dozen people called the local ambulance, no doubt because Jan was bleeding so much. And head wounds always bleed a lot.

Another Italian woman, who was probably in her mid to late 60s, held Jan's hands and told her to calm down, that everything would be ok. Eventually, and ambulance showed up, after Paige said that the bleeding had pretty much stopped and that Jan should be ok, and wanted to take her to hospital. We told the emergency technicians that paige was a "medico" and that he was pretty sure that she'd be ok, and that we'd take her back to the B&B and keep an eye on her.

They put her on a stretcher anyway, and took her into the ambulance, but assured us that they only wanted to look at her and bandgage her head. And luckily that was all they did.

We called Ugo back and asked him if he could come to Sorrento train station instead of Sant'Angelo to pick us up, and he did so without a problem. When he showed up, he was really surprised by the bandage on Jan's head. It looked more like a turban.

We eventually got back to the B&B and put her to bed. We went out to buy groceries and had dinner in that night. Needless to say, Jan had a really bad headache, but all in all she was ok.