Paestum - Greek Ruins in Italy!

Undeterred by our miss the previous day, we headed down to Paestum after checking out of our hostel. Paestum is a modestly sized Greek ruin from the 7th century AD. It has three temples standing, one with columns around six feet across at the base. There are also a few mosaics, atria, and a lot of waist-high walls. It is supposed to be one of the best preserved Greek sites anywhere, better than any we are likely to see in Greece, yet gets few visitors...perhaps because there is so much less left of it than the nearby Roman cities. It was very nice, and we lingered until 6pm. The evening at these archaeological sites are much nicer. It's cooler, less bright, and there are fewer people. They're quite serene. There wasn't much left of the other buildings around the temples, but we were able to spot many similarities in architecture to Pompeii.

From Naples

From Naples

From Naples

Paestum is evidently on a train line, which our guidebook failed to mention, and there are plenty of late trains directly back to Naples. Our hostel hostess would have told us this yesterday, had we told her we were thinking of going there. While waiting for the train, we talked with a man leading a small group of his students on tour: they'd come down for the day from Rome and visited both Pompeii and Paestum in one day. That sounds a bit grueling, but doable. I think they did it in the wrong order though, should do Paestum (which doesn't get that busy) in the morning and Pompeii in the evening after the other tourists have departed. We caught the 6pm train back to Naples and changed for the next train for Rome. We had just missed a train, so we waited an hour for the next train, which was then "retardo" by around an hour. So we got into Rome right at midnight, which is when the metro line and regular bus service stop. Did I mention that we booked a "camping" hotel in the middle of nowhere? They do seem to run night buses that approximate the metro routes, so we took that to around the metro stop where we would have caught a bus to our accommodations, and then grabbed a taxi for 26 Euros, which still equates to cheaper than staying in the center.

From Naples