{"id":4292,"date":"2025-12-14T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/?p=4292"},"modified":"2025-12-21T13:44:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T13:44:39","slug":"and-were-off-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2025\/12\/14\/and-were-off-again\/","title":{"rendered":"And we&#8217;re off again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Stayed at Gatwick again as the flight was very very early morning (06:40). We did the twilight bag drop, you can drop your bag between 20:00 and 22:00 if you have a flight before 8:30 which is very helpful. We still had to get up early, but could just go straight through security rather than faffing with bags. We still managed to be far too early. But the flight was fine, though it was one of those have to get a bus from the plane to the terminal. And then we had trouble at passport control &#8211; Joe&#8217;s threw up errors that everyone was taking photos of, including the supervisor! Which was a bit worrying, but they did let us in so not sure what happened. Possibly leaving the EU and only being in the UK for a few days before heading out again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a bus that will take you directly from Naples Airport to Pompeii, but it runs on a reduced schedule in the off season, so Joe and I had several hours at the airport (landed around 10:00 and the bus didn&#8217;t go until 13:00). We ended up just staying around the airport where we had coffee and a toasted sandwich and watched people until time to get the bus. Smaller bus than we expected, but nice ride to Pompeii with a good view of Vesuvius. The bus drops off at the main entrance to the ruins which is about a 15 minute walk to our hotel (<a href=\"https:\/\/hoteldelsolepompei.it\/en\/\">Hotel del Sole<\/a>), but I first went up to get our My Pompeii tickets, then off to the hotel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were able to check in when we arrived which was nice. Our room was also nice, we got the <a href=\"https:\/\/hoteldelsolepompei.it\/en\/rooms-in-pompeii-suite-amorini\/\">Suite Amorini<\/a>. So we admired the view (overlooking the ruins which is why I got the room!) and then then headed out to see the bookshop at the site and get a guide. Then we stopped at a small cafe (Victoria caf\u00e9 &amp; bistrot) and got coffees and pastries (well, Joe got a rum baba which was lovely). We then went back to the hotel to relax as we were really tired from the early start, travelling, and hanging around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ended up having dinner at the hotel &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/varnellipompei.com\/en\/homepage-2\/\">Varnelli <\/a>&#8211; which is excellent. We went down early and had a drink before dinner and then had a cheese and meat platter, then shared a large steak. The puddings looked excellent as well but far too full to manage one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stayed at Gatwick again as the flight was very very early morning (06:40). We did the twilight bag drop, you can drop your bag between 20:00 and 22:00 if you have a flight before 8:30 which is very helpful. We still had to get up early, but could just go straight through security rather than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4T97-17e","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":359,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/10\/waiting\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":0},"title":"Waiting","date":"Sunday, 10 January 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Waiting for the BA bag drop to open. Virgin is checking people in so we're hopeful there will be a flight. We didn't do much today. Got up, made sure we were all packed, checked out, found the bus (Deuce), and went to Paris. Decided we didn't like any of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":303,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2009\/12\/19\/at-the-airport\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":1},"title":"At the airport","date":"Saturday, 19 December 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Waiting for the flight. Probably delayed. Most likely delayed as it's suppose to go at 10.05 and we're not even thinking about boarding! Oh well. Up far too early, here in plenty of time for the utter chaos that BA consider fast bag drop. None of the boards giving proper\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":362,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/01\/10\/still-waiting\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":2},"title":"Still Waiting","date":"Sunday, 10 January 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, made it through the chaos that is BA bag drop\/checkin\/whatever. It's a mess - the signs were wrong, no one knew where to go or what was happening, they waited forever to open so there was a mass of people in the queue. Just a mess. But we got\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":45,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2005\/11\/30\/first-day\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":3},"title":"First day","date":"Wednesday, 30 November 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all! We are here. Arrived yesterday afternoon - over an hour late but we arrived. The flight was long - very long. During most of the flight had no idea what time it was or even what day it was. Knew where we were, could see that on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4265,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2023\/12\/20\/last-days-of-warmth\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":4},"title":"Last days of warmth","date":"Wednesday, 20 December 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Last day at the Parador, had a mimosa at breakfast \u2013 hadn\u2019t seen anyone else open the champagne but decided to give it a go with the orange juice. Was being ever so discrete until the top went \u2018bang\u2019. But it was a nice drink. We spent some time sitting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Frog Blog&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":427,"url":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/03\/cape-coast-to-amsterdam\/","url_meta":{"origin":4292,"position":5},"title":"Cape Coast to Amsterdam","date":"Friday, 3 September 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"As we were at the bus getting ready to head out to Accra and the airport, one of the delegates strolled up and said his flight left at 1745!\u00a0 So it was a mad drive to the airport and we just got there in time. Check in was chaotic and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Travel&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4293,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4292\/revisions\/4293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purple-penguin.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}