Pompei

House of the Faun (biggest mansion in Pompeii)
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Finally we made it to Pomei!  We bought a book to help us decifer the ruins, and then realized that a free map at the TI gave you almost the same thing.  We still were not having very good luck.  But then we went inside, and it was one of the most amazing sites ever! It really was a completely intact Roman city, with all the roads and houses and shops, and you could really feel what it would have been like to live then. It was impossible to see the whole thing because we only had about 3 hours before we had to catch the train back, but we started off trying to follow the guidbook.  After about an hour and a half of this we realized it was too difficult to navigate because it really was like a normal city with street names and everything, so we just started wandering around.  We made sure to go to the brothel because it was supposed to be really funny.  You could see the paintings on the walls which some people thought were a type of menu, but our guide book says they werent.  You could still see the names of the girls scratched on the walls.  The other highlights were the beautiful amphitheaters and the house of the faun which was the biggest house they have found.  We saw the original art and mosaics in the museum in naples, and it was helpful to recognize it because they had replicas at the site. The baths were also really cool and you could even go in the little changing rooms.  There were also the casts of people that had died in the volcano, and they were all in contorted positions, and it was pretty creepy.  The best part was that it was pretty empty with not many tourists and cool out because we were by the sea.  It was really cool because they just let you walk around and explore the whole site on your own, and there were very few restrictions.  The area around it was also beautiful because it was by the coast and there were mountains all around us.  The whole site was absolutely spectacular.

Jessie in the House of the Faun
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After that we caught the train and didnt really have any difficulties coming back to Rome except that our train was an hour late getting back, though there was plenty of airconditioning...so we were happy.  Even though we thought we were safe back in Rome after Naples, we thought too soon because on our way out of the train station, a pervert exhibitionist decided to but the icing on our bad luck day.  Luckily we made it back to our hotel safe and sound, and nothing else bad happened for the rest of the night.