Pompeii & Mt Vesuvius

Today we head for Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius. I’ve been looking forward to seeing Pompeii and not sure of what I expect to see.

Pompeii is about an hour from Sorrento and as you drive into the Pompeii area you lose all the beauty of the Sorrento Peninsula. It’s very flat and sprawling. I had no idea that Pompeii is a whole city and not just the site of the ruins.

When you get your first glimpse of the ruins you are surprised at the size of it. It’s much bigger than I expected. Unfortunately, our tour didn’t pre-book the tickets so we had to wait in line, but they took us to a quieter gate and it didn't take that long. While Terry was lining up I was able to get some photos of what everyone think is mummified bodies in pavilions along the entry path. 

The “bodies” that you see are actually plaster casts. What happened was when the volcano erupted it spread ash over the entire area covering the people where they fell. The ash then entombed the bodies and over the centuries the flesh decayed and left on the bones in a cavity. When they found these cavities the removed the bones, used the cavity as a mold and the filled it with plaster. The detail of the casting is pretty amazing and very sad to see.

Our guide Giuseppina started the tour by taking us to a large amphitheatre. It is well preserved with only some of the stone seating missing around the arena. A more recent claim to fame of the amphitheatre was that Pink Floyd played a concert there. A bit of a stark contrast in cultures.

Next, we walked the business area where we were shown a street of shops. It was explained that if the building that had a wide opening and a groove in the doorstep it was a shop. Next to each shop was the entrance to the residence which would have been above the shop.

Apparently, many of the shop were fast food shops. The residents of the area did not have good cooking facilities at their houses so they would go and buy their food from one in the town. You can still see where the cooking pots sat and the counter area for serving.

As you wander through the streets and look into the properties you can get a sense of what life would have been like.

The excavated site is huge and we only got to see about a quarter of it. It was quite hot and the sun seemed to radiate off the all the stone paving. At one stage I sat down to rest in the shade because I seem to have lost my ankles somewhere between Rome and Sorrento. Rafaella tells me I’m in Italy now so I just need to accept. Not sure if it’s the heat or the constant uneven ground but I’ll be glad to get them back.

Anyway, back to Pompeii…you could easily spend a whole day here and probably not see all of it and you would probably get lost doing it. How cool are these trees. They look like they are pruned but someone told me they are umbrella pines and they grow all over the place. Not usually a fan of conifers but I like these ones 

We finished the tour in the main square and that was a bit a wow moment as you entered you can see how amazing it must have been. The only downside was that it was crowded with tourists. This is an amazing and incredibly sad site.  Well worth the visit.

The rest of the tour was a trip up to Mt Vesuvius. This was a bit of a hairy ride as we were in a 50 seater bus and the road was barely wide enough for two cars let alone a bus. Then to add to that the road wound up the side of the mountain in a series of hairpin bins. I’m not freaked out easily by this kind of thing but I have to admit there was a few times I gasped.

We stopped at the carpark which was a 1000m from the top. We had to decide before we saw the track and after the way my ankles have been the last few days I decided against doing the climb. Terry was pretty happy about that. When I saw the path it looked easier than I thought it would so I would have been OK to do it although Terry would have stayed at the carpark. While I’m sure than it would have been an impressive site,  but I’m not too disappointed that I didn’t do it. I think in hindsight I would have preferred to go to Herculanuem another town destroyed but the eruption of Vesuvius. 

I guess you can’t get it right all the time.