Pompeii

We left Rome on Thursday 4 October, making our way to Amalfi via Pompeii.

We had a mid morning stop at Monte Cassino and a visit to the war memorial there. A lot of Australians and New Zealanders were buried there. The countryside was amazing, lots of rolling hills, little towns, churches and some castles perched on the mountain tops. Then, Vesuvius started to appear...wow!

We arrived at Pompeii just before midday, and had some time to grab a quick lunch before our tour. We had some pizza, the further north you go, the better the pizza is, honestly the pizza is amazing...the lightest base, fabulous tomato sauce, better cheese...in fact the less toppings the better.

So, lunch devoured off we set with our guide. Again, I was pretty excited. When we were planning Italy, Pompeii was on top of the list.

Walking up to the entrance, Pompeii is perched highest, you had no idea what to expect, everything is hidden by it's walls. You could also see how close they were to the bottom of Vesuvius. They thought it was a mountain, they probably didn't even know what a volcano was. Poor buggers, they never had a hope.

We entered at the site's lowest point, at the outside area of their arena. This area was completely covered when found, looking to the very top was the height of the ash. Amazing!! From there we walked up into the arena, which was pretty close to perfect with amazing acoustics. It was hot sitting there in the full sun.

We walked up more stairs to the edge of the 'town', walked through some shops, down some streets and to the red light district! The streets and building ruins are quite well preserved, everything makes sense, you can see how things would have looked and I realized it was much larger than I had anticipated.

The red light district was loads of fun, the main brothel had heaps of frescoes on the walls depicting various 'menus' the men could choose from. A lot of them were marked on the outside with obvious phallic symbols...everyone was snapping away on their cameras, what fun!

From there we continued up the hill, main streets etc, we saw relics of a pizza oven, their pipe systems, wells for water, plumbing for toilets and so forth, just remarkable.

Then we moved to the town square area, temples, marble, smaller arenas (Pink Floyd shot a live concert/film here early in their career at the smaller round amphitheater), market areas, too much in one spot, it was very overwhelming. To the side of the main temple were cages filled with relics, vases, urns, jewellery cases, furniture, tools etc. Most of the real treasure has been moved to the Pompeii Museum in Naples.

Within this area there were casts of bodies. These were taken from actual bodies found. I was incredibly moved by this. You could see and feel the sheer terror of the people by the poses, most of them in the fetal position, one lady obviously pregnant. It was upsetting to see and think about. Near the market area were cave like rooms with bits and pieces inside, including a skeleton. I couldn't look at that, it was too much.






We walked around for a bit and ended up near the exit area, with amazing views looking down to the new town of Pompeii and towards Naples and the Amalfi coast...our next destination

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