Pompei and Vesuvius

Yesterday we visited Pompei and Mt. Vesuvius.  For those of you who aren’t aware, Mt. Vesuvius is an active volcano which destroyed the neighboring cities of Pompei and Hercalaneum in 79 A.D. both of which were discovered in the 15th? century but excavation only began about 1800... and both are still being uncovered today.  Pompei was the bigger of the two cities and located closer to the volcano, and when Vesuvius erupted it virtually froze the city in time - artifacts and bodies alike were found preserved by the volcanic rock.  Most of the remaining artifacts are the the museum in Naples, but we don’t feel like dealing with the lack of organization, etc. so we’re skipping the museum (its about an hour away anyhow.)

So Pompei was pretty cool because the ancient city had a lot of more advanced technologies, such as running water, streets, etc. and it was neat to see how their technology worked, though it was hard to remember this was almost 2000 years ago and not 500.  The city itself was cool because of the ancient temples and such, though I’m not super interested in the ancient periods and it was hot and sunny so I got bored quickly - the architecture was very cool to see in some places, but other than that it was a lot of walking past walls and walls and walls... the interesting sites were spread out but definitely worth the time - glad I went though I did get over it pretty quickly LOL.  We were excited to see the volcano so we skipped a few of the sites of Pompei that were really far and didn’t seem worth our time and headed for the mountain - we had to take an almost hour long bus trip to the “top” and then hike the rest of the way, though there was a steep, wide gravelly path for tourists to follow - it is a main attraction of the area.  And expensive!  I can’t believe they charged for Pompei, the bus to the top, the hike to the top, AND if you wanted to see the rest of the crater rim another fee because you had to have a mandatory guide (would have loved to do this, but it was late, looked a little scary, and expensive - will definitely hit this next time if I’m in better shape!)  The walk up the top was arduous (more tough than the mountain the other day) but once we hit the top it was very very cool to see - got some great photographs and is definitely something I would do again if I come back to the area.

Of course, the ride home on the metro was probably the roughest part of the day for me - apparently there was a train fire further down the line between us and our stop, so the train kept stopping and no one knew what was going on, especially us since we spoke English... after waiting at two different stops for over 20 mins each (hot and crowded and sweaty - I am a little claustrophobic and had a headache and really did not feel well) everyone finally had to get off the train - so I ran across the street to a hotel and asked them where the bus stop was to Sorrento - apparently the train is the only way to get there from this city... but the reception lady was amazing and came back to the metro with us and figured out what was going on and explained it to us, so we ended up waiting only another 20 minutes or so and explained to the other tourists what was going on, and finally finally made it home (the problem with the fire was that all the trains had to share one track, so we had to wait for other trains to pass and vice versa.)  Zac and I found a restaurant that took a credit card (yay!!!) and had some local red wine and delicious pasta and felt much much better - managed to get the bus back to our campground with not trouble this time :)  We decided that it wasn’t worth our time to try to get to Naples today as planned (and travel to Sicily tonight) if the train was still not working properly, so we’re staying an extra day here and relaxing, then going to Naples tomorrow and hopefully Sicily from there.