After the Archeological Museum, we were starving.  It was about 5pm.  In our defense, we had flown in that morning and hadn’t stopped to eat anything but gelato.

But it was delicious gelato.  I had coffee and pistachio.  I’m preferential to coffee gelato, but the pistachio gave it a real run for the money.  

But let’s be honest for a second, I eat at 5pm every evening. And I turn into a hungry-grumpysaurus if my meal gets pushed to 7pm, much less 9pm.  I’m also in bed around 10pm.  Real question: how will I ever cope in Spain?

Anyway.

We stopped by a restaurant on my list to visit (sometimes its helpful to have some ideas, but not feel pressured to make it to every place on your list)—Osteria Il Garum, which was sort of between the museum and our hotel, on Piazza Monteoliveto.  Of course they weren’t serving dinner yet, but they offered to let us sit in their charming little restaurant (they also have awesome outdoor seating, but it was a bit chilly already that night).

Oh safaris. The African kind (south or east Africa, to be directionally specific). It's about the only thing I can or willingly want to talk for hours about. Total verbal vomit.
 
For example, "Heather, what's your favorite animal"? Dik diks and warthogs.  I can't choose just one. But I'm also obsessed with bat-eared foxes and wild dogs. Don't get me wrong, I love the Big 5, particularly rhinos (white or black, I don't discriminate), but there is just something about those crazy cute foxes that you can never ever find and the way the little tails on the warthogs stick up when they run, particularly when there is one big warthog and a bunch of little warthogs all running in one line.
 
Yes, I do have an enormous stuffed warthog in my house. It's cool. Dear husband ignores it.

Despite being off-season, meaning all the high-end designer boutiques were mostly closed (because I can afford a bunch of $600 pants, obvi), Capri was stunning.  In fact, I think it was even more stunning with less people.

We hadn’t really planned that far ahead…we knew we wanted to go to Capri, but didn’t know what specifically we wanted to do. In fact, we sort of purposely hadn’t planned, so we had the flexibility to wander, enjoy the scenery, and obviously eat copious amounts of gelato.

So we took the high-speed (which is more like medium-speed) ferry to Capri, around 7am.  It was an hour or so trip with some brilliant salespeople who were very good at persuading the large Chinese tour group to purchase wildly unnecessary numbers of bags and hats.  

Oh Naples.  It was our first time to Naples, and actually my first time to Italy.  Thanks to the crazywebs (internet), if anything I had relatively low expectations for Naples.

You can’t possibly read the TripAdvisor forums without reading about how horrible the pickpockets are in Naples, particularly on the Circumvesuviana (the train from Naples to Pompeii, that continues all the way to Sorrento).  Considering I dressed up as a pickpocket (don’t ask) in 3rd grade, I was almost disappointed that we didn’t see any potential pickpocketing action in Naples.  Kidding. 

Pompeii is arguably more famous or well-known than Herculaneum, but if you go to see Pompeii, Herculaneum should not be missed.  I think if you wanted to get up early and enter either Pompeii or Herculaneum when it opened—given that the crowds weren't horrible—seeing both in one day would be possible. We didn't want to rush and decided to combine Vesuvius with Herculaneum, as the bus to Vesuvius left from the Ercolano train station, not far from the Herculaneum entrance.  It was also nice to split up the two archaeological sites, particularly if this isn't your thing, you might be fatigued by building after building. 

While Pompeii is undoubtedly on a much grander scale, Herculaneum (located in the town of Ercolano) was preserved extraordinarily well a level beneath the current town.  Stunning mosaics remain in place.  Herculaneum is particularly famous for the Villa dei Papiri, which unfortunately is closed to visitors (maybe will open in future?). A skeleton of a horse was unearthed in this Villa, and many mosaics and murals remain intact.  There is interesting information and artifacts from this villa in the archaeological museum.

During our recent trip to Naples and Pompeii, we stayed at the Renaissance Naples Hotel Mediterraneo, a Marriott property.
 
The Renaissance has pretty decent reviews on TripAdvisor, with some complaints about old and cramped rooms.  I don't care if the decor is ancient, particularly on a quick trip like this, but I do care about cleanliness (a lot). I have a very low tolerance for dirt and grime.
 
(Note: if you have a strong hatred for 1980's wooden furniture in your room, this isn't the place for you. If you want a view from your room, ask in advance).
 

Let’s preface this by saying I hadn’t even heard the Bastille Pompeii song until the day before we left for the trip and I don’t choose places to go based on movies. DH (dear husband) can attest to movie apathy…

In reality, Pompeii had been on my travel list for some time.  Professionally, I’ve done work on other worst case scenarios, and in terms of natural disasters, this really seemed like one of those.  It was certainly not a good day/month/year for Pompeiians.

So beyond the disaster-drawing mystique, I’m also a fan of history, particularly of past empires that have since fallen. Pompeii seemed like a natural choice.  I wasn’t disappointed, though I will say that Herculaneum (Ercolano) was an equally rewarding and interesting site.  I don’t think you can really see one without the other.

For quite a few months, I've been toying with starting a travel blog.  I've thus far resisted, for a few reasons. They really aren't important though I'm sure other blog-lurkers might connect with some of them.
 
Time: While I certainly have time to spare, I'm not particularly blog or HTML-savvy and realized this would take some time.  I finally decided that the long-term benefits would outweigh my frustration and the initial time-suck involving non-writing activities. I've opted for some non-recommended easy-ways-out (read Weebly, not WordPress), so I can reduce my time investment on the tech side. Should I need to upgrade in the future, so be it, but I'll probably be paying someone to do it for me.
 
Privacy: I'm an incredibly private person. I don't like being the center of attention. I don't really enjoy talking about myself.  I don't want my entire life on display.  I've decided I can balance this...but particularly at first, I'll be sharing a little about us, not a lot. Random tidbits? Of course. Life story, current employer, etc.? Probably not. Except about our dog, whose privacy doesn't concern me as much...we're totally cool with her becoming a celebrity. She is very photogenic.
 
Value Added: What could I possibly have to say that my favorite travel bloggers haven't already covered?  But I realized that, when looking for trip advice, I often found that there weren't a lot of travelers blogging that traveled primarily for vacation and worked full-time (I use traveler loosely...if you prefer vacationer, so be it).  I find that traveling for vacation changes your priorities: it's more of a hobby and less of a lifestyle.  Without a doubt, I appreciate and respect all the full-time traveler's advice and recommendations, don't get me wrong, but it's just not quite the same when all you have is maybe 2 weeks (and usually a whole lot less).
 
Additionally, I wanted to provide a perspective on using and accruing miles/points in a manner I term "normal-person use".  Again, nothing against the people who collect like crazy, eat/sleep/dream earning strategies, and do mileage runs, as I've learned a ton from them. I'm in between the "do-nothing" crowd (for the record: you should do something when it comes to miles/points) and the professional hackers.  I.e. average. It's one of the few areas in which I'm perfectly content to call myself such (husband can attest to my overly competitive nature, even about things like spelling and folding towels).
 
Ultimately, I actually really enjoy writing and talking about traveling...with other people that actually travel, so the scale was tipped in the direction of trying this out.  I'm prepared if it goes down in flames, though I hope to eventually add to the community where I've been  lurking for quite a while. 
 
So, welcome. Thanks for visiting. You can read about me here. Maybe something on TravelingSaurus will be useful to you in planning future trips, and if not, maybe you can provide useful tips to me or share your experiences (please comment or point me to your blog!).