Italy: Day 4

Despite last night's stressful experience on Rome's public transportation, we made it up for yet another 6:45am departure to southern Italy - a quick stopover in Naples and onwards to Pompeii.

We joined Carrani Tours once again and it was funny because we got the same tour guide as we did on our trip to Florence. Three hours later after a bathroom break and a horrible traffic jam due to a crazy accident, we arrived in Naples.


We picked up our local tour guide, Constantino, in Naples and he led us through a few sites in Naples. Unfortunately, we probably had about an hour (maybe not even an hour) so we really only saw the outside of a few things. Among them was the Maschio Angioino Castle (aka Castel Nuovo):


Moving along towards Pompeii, we passed by the town of Herculaneum (Ercolano) that was also buried from the eruption of what is now Mt. Vesuvius. We caught glimpses of the Bay of Naples and the mountain chain that dipped into the Tyrrhenian Sea ending with the island of Capri.

We had lunch in Pompeii on a nice terrace.


However, we were not given enough food at all (again, hate those tour group lunches). Everyone on the tour was unimpressed and upset as well.

In the little square outside the entrance to the ruins, shops lined the streets with various tacky souvenirs. Among them was a juice stand that sold spremuta and lemonade made from these giant lemons.


Entering the archaelogical wonder of Pompeii, Constantino led us through a series of Pompeiian ruins of gyms,


amphitheatres,


bakeries (this is where they mill their flour),


houses (note that is a mosaic of a "Beware the Dog!" sign!),


wine shops, and even a brothel!

We saw some preserved people (these are reverse castings - I think that's what it's called - of the people which were molded by the ash that covered them after the eruption).




It's strange how overwhelming this is, considering it captures the exact moment of when they died. I found their emotions were clearly captured by the positions that they were in.

We ended our tour in the center of the city where the main temple, main court yard, town hall, currency exchanges, among other things, all met.


Walking through Pompeii, you get a sense of how intelligent these people were. They didn't have a good plumbing system and the streets were quite polluted. As a result, they built these stepping stones raised above the main road in order for people to step cleanly from one major public building to another. Also, you can even see the grooves of the wheels that have worn into the stone road. Everything was just so impressive and it all ended in 79 AD.