Pompeii, Rome trip

Ever since I was in high school I have had a fascination with the lost city of Pompeii. I took high school Latin and we watched some movie about Pompeii and the volcano, Mt. Vesuvius erupting and covering the city. It was a must for me to visit Pompeii on this trip to Italy. Today was finally the day.

If you need a little history lesson...here is the background to the city. Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples. Pompeii was destroyed, and completely buried, during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in AD 79.
The volcano collapsed higher roof-lines and buried Pompeii under 60 feet of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1700 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire. Today, it is both one of the most popular tourist attractions of Italy, with 2,571,725 visitors in 2007,[1] and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The excavated town offers a snapshot of Roman life in the 1st century, frozen at the moment it was buried on 24 August 79. The Forum, the baths, many houses, and some out-of-town villas remain surprisingly well preserved. Besides the forum, many other services were found: the Macellum (great food market), the Pistrinum (mill), the Thermopolium (sort of bar that served cold and hot beverages), and cauponae (small restaurants). An amphitheatre and two theatres have been found, along with a palaestra or gymnasium.

We awoke to another gorgeous, sunny day. We had a big European breakfast at the hotel. We timed leaving Positano when the hotel guy said the traffic would be the best. Everything seemed to be going perfect.

We zig zagged along the coast of Italy. Lia mentioned that she had a headache and that her stomach hurt. Lily was in full worry mode now so she started entertaining Lia to get her mind off of all of the curves. Finally we made it to Sorento and Traffic jam! We creeped through town. Just when we were almost out of town and out of the jam..."Bleh!" Lia felt much better but had thrown up all over herself and the floor of the rental car. John would not pull over so we drove all the way to Pompeii. Oh the smell!! We took a wrong turn (navi probs again) so we pulled into a gas station for directions. I took Lia to the bathroom to clean her up. John cleaned up the car. It was disgusting. I got her cleaned up but her pants and undies were wasted. The puke would not come out so I tied her jacket around her naked bottom half.

So we made it to the Pompeii ruins site and the parking lot dude said we could find a clothing shop in town, which was about 1 km away. We walked for an hour and never found town. So we gave up and John let Lia wear his coat which came down to her knees.

Lia was a real trooper. She didn't complain about her situation. We had to keep her in the sun because in the shade she got a bit cold! People must of thought we were great parents with our bare legged child in the 40 degree weather.

Finally at about 1:00 we made it into the ruins and we had 3 hours to see it all. The place is HUGE. I had no idea it was such a large site. And it was so amazing! I was in a trance walking around and seeing the ruins. We used the audio guides that talked about each section. Lily and I really enjoyed hearing the details. John didn't want one at all. Lia used hers for about 20 minutes.

The view of Mt Vesuvius was pretty neat. It is 5 miles from Pompeii.

One thing you notice when you walk deeper into the city are the perfectly staight streets laid out in a grid pattern. The ancient cobble stoned streets are in great condition. We found out that the large blocks in the street are there so the pedestrians could walk across the street without getting their feet wet or stepping in horse manure. The Romans had water running constantly through the city to keep the streets clean. Also, notice the ruts in the street from the wagon wheels.


Some of the houses had beautiful fresco painted walls, detailed mosaic floors and many other details kept perfectly frozen in time. All of the original statues were removed and taken to the Naples Museum of Archeology. There are lots of items from Pompeii in this museum. They removed wall paintings and entire mosaic floors and took them to Naples.
Temple and Forum area.

House with fancy back garden.

Theater

Bar

Mosaic floor
Mosaic floor

Fresco painted walls




In one area we saw two "bodies". During early excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. One archaeologist realised these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so he devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to perfectly recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. What resulted were highly accurate and eerie forms of the doomed Pompeiani who failed to escape, in their last moment of life, with the expression of terror often quite clearly visible. They were very interesting to see.




The ancient Roman bath was very interesting. The rooms were completely intact. There was the cold bath room and the steam bath room and the changing rooms and some other rooms. The marble around this large bath tub was in perfect condition.
This room in the bath was really neat and had little sculptures all around the wall.

This is the outside of the large amphitheater.
This is part of the interior of the amphitheater.

The city just went on and on. There was no way you could see everything in one full day, let alone 2 days. In three hours, we saw what we could and felt pretty satisfied on everything we saw.


We were pretty tired after we got back to the hotel and all we wanted to do was have a pizza delivered to our room. Ha Ha!! The hotel guy looked at me pretty strange and said no, there wasn't a place in town to deliver pizza. But he said another local restaurant was open tonight and we could eat there and they could pick us up.

We were so excited. The restaurant was way up on the top of the cliff. The view was amazing but the food was 10 times better. This man came up to our table and said tonight we would not be seeing a menu. His Mom and Dad are the cooks at the restaurant and they had prepared several selections that would be served to us as an appetizer course, a pasta course, a grilled meat course, and then dessert.

The appetizers alone were way too much food. They brought out 12 dishes of food along with the house wine and bread. Everything was new and different and very good. The pasta course was my favorite. Homemade ravioli, stuffed shells and more. Lily had mentioned that she was hungry for spaghetti so they brought her this humongous plate of spaghetti. She took a couple of bites and then was completely stuffed. She even felt a little nauseous, she had eaten so much.

Then the grilled meat came. The plate was about 20 inches in diameter and full of all kinds of grilled meats. We were already stuffed but we tried to taste a few things. We hardly put a dent in the dish. Dessert was still to come. They also gave John and I a shot of Lemoncello! Yummy! I wouldn't even know what this is had it not been for my brother, Terry. He made Lemoncello at Christmas and we had a shot of it on New Year's Eve. His tasted much sweeter. I liked his better.

Somehow we managed to eat most of the dessert. They only sent out really small samples of about 5 desserts. Poor Lily didn't eat any dessert. She was really feeling stuffed. I think she was worrying that she might throw up, especially after this morning. I spent a good portion of the night in the restaurant bathroom with her trying to calm her down.

This was a truly great experience to eat in this local, Mom and Pop, restaurant. It was a true hightlight to an awesome week. Tomorrow we fly home.