I would highly recommend a trip to Pompeii to anyone going to Italy, especially if you're excited about looking at ancient Roman things. The Forum and the Palatine Hill were cool, but you were just looking at the city center area and the mansions that the really wealthy and high society people of Rome lived in. You just came away with a feeling that that wasn't all. It was awesome and incredible and somewhat overwhelming, but it wasn't a city, it was just part of it.
Pompeii on the other hand was everything. Everything was saved regardless of whether it was a temple or a minor bath on the outer fringes of town, whether the person who lived there could have bought the town ten times over or was squatting in a hovel on the side of the road. The audio guide was nice to have, but it was fun just wandering around the place at will, exploring the streets and the houses that were open, and everything in between.
This is the forum of Pompeii, the main central square, with the temple of Jupiter in the foreground and Mt. Vesuvius rising up in the background.
A couple of things you need to know about Pompeii if you decide to go. First, it's hot. Way hot. Rome was hot, and then we drove over three hours due south to get to Pompeii. Bring water and stick to the shade. For example
This is what we were doing the entire day in Pompeii. No, he's not getting ready to jump out and scare those nice people in the street, he's just edging along the wall to keep all parts of him in the shade as long as possible. We probably looked like we were pretending to be some weird sort of tourist ninjas, but even doing that as much as possible, this was the only day out of the whole trip that I came close to getting sunburned (I was red, but it didn't persist to the next day). If you have the luxury of staying in Naples or even in the city of Pompeii, I would highly recommend going as soon as they open in the morning, or later in the afternoon. Doing that you'll miss the crowds of people that come on buses from Rome, and the shadows from the buildings will be longer and easier to stay in. Not to mention it would probably be cooler than the heat of the day.
Also, there are a couple phrases you should be prepared to hear many, many times. Did you know that there was a major earthquake in 62 CE before the eruption in 79 CE? Thus phrase number one is “this building was undergoing renovations/rebuilding after the earthquake of 62, but they weren't done yet.” The other phrase you'll hear a lot, to the point where you'll know when it's coming and be able to recite it along with the audio guide. Repeat after me: “This object [statue/mosaic/urn/bust/etc] is a reproduction. The original is in the archaeological museum in Naples.” Nick and I were up on the wall around the city looking at this vineyard:
I turned to him and said “Hey, Nick. Did you know that this vineyard is just a reproduction? The original is in the archaeological museum in Naples.” We laughed, haha, very funny, but then we came down and I can't remember if there was a sign or if we were listening to the audio guide at that point, but we're going along and come to find out that the vineyard was planted on the site of a vineyard when Pompeii was a real town, and that the vines were planted where they found the imprints of the old vine roots. And the casts that were made of these roots? In the Archaeological Museum in Naples. We stared at each other in stunned silence for a couple of seconds, and then nearly killed ourselves laughing.
One thing that I never understood about Pompeii until this trip was how they found the preserved bodies and made casts of them. I always thought that something along the lines of fossilization happened, and they were just digging in the ash one day and came across whole people. What actually happened is that they were digging in the ash one day and came across a person sized and shaped cavity in the ash, where the person had been covered with ash, which hardened into a rock casing, and then the actual person inside disintegrated away. The supervisor of the dig instructed the minions to fill the cavity with plaster, and then they carefully chipped away the solidified ash/rock until they came down to the plaster cast, revealing a perfect cast of the person that was originally there almost 2000 years ago. So when they say that they unearth people that have been perfectly preserved at Pompeii, what they really mean is that they've unearthed perfectly preserved people molds at Pompeii, from which they can make casts of perfectly preserved people.
Pretty cool.
I should probably wrap this up before you start thinking that I'm trying to write a book about Pompeii, so just a couple last things.
This was on the side of a building, just out there, and I think it was part of a street marker or something, because it was a building sitting on one corner of an intersection
Whatever it was, I like it.
Finally, upon exiting Pompeii on a quest for lunch, we saw this place, which I just had to take a picture of.
Would you like some orange or lemon...sujce? Someone needs to work on their handwriting to the printers.
Well, that brings the Italian part of our trip to a close. Next we're off to Paris for the purpose of putting Nick on a plane home, and then I'm taking the train into Germany for the next part of my trip, a stopover in the small town of Lӧrrach, Germany, just across the border from Basel, Switzerland, and then on to Munich for two weeks to take German classes. Bis spӓter!
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