Pompeii

Last Sunday, we woke up (after some grumbling and hmffing) at about 4am , headed to Termini, and within 5 minutes bought train tickets, grabbed a cappuccino (in a to-go cup, first time ever) and ran to the train to take us to Napoli. We arrived in Napoli to the familiar garbage lined streets and shady street vendors we discovered on our first visit. After killing about a half hour, "shopping" around, browsing the knock-off handbags and sunglasses, we boarded the local metro which took us to this amazing little city called Pompeii. Apart from the super-high, tourist-focused prices (one guy tried to sell me a pack of AA batteries for 19 euro!), this city is truly original and unlike anything I have seen before. Pompeii, which was built around the 8th-9th century BC, sits right below one of the two big volcanoes in Italy, Vesuvio. In the year 79AD Vesuvio erupted, engulfing the entire city in molten lava ash, and killing everyone and everything in its path. In the year 1748 the city was discovered under this type of hardened cast, completely preserved, revealing interesting information about Roman life during this time. The dirt roads were lined with small homes from this period, some big, some small, the walls of many covered in colorful “frescos”. We even found a brothel from that time called the Lupenare, which was a house with different rooms containing hard rock beds, and frescos painted on the walls illustrating the different services offered (they were very inventive at the time, it turns out). We saw the oldest standing amphitheater in the world (80 BC)! Apparently, this was also the same place where Pink Floyd played a concert in the 70s. This was more impressive for Sean, since this Pink Floyd live at Pompeii was a very important video he used to watch in his college days. After walking around the amphitheater, taking about a hundred photos, Sean, his brother Ethan and I stood around just taking in the amazing history of the whole environment, when I suddenly felt something crawling around inside my jeans. Before I realized what was going on, I was stung by a bee on the back of my thigh. The pain grew more intense by the second and I couldn’t help but scream. I didn’t know what to do, since we were standing in the middle of an open field, I was wearing jeans and all I wanted to do was take my pants off. As tears streamed down my face, Sean (quite the hero) pulled me over the fence of this secluded area under the stands of the theater. He pulled out a tiny stinger and the back of my leg flared puffy and pink. These 2 French guys walked by asking Sean’s brother how they could get to the area where we were. Ethan informed them there was nothing back there, but I was having a minor emergency and they just looked at him skeptically as if Ethan were guarding this special unknown part of Pompeii and Sean and I were the only ones selected to see it. They lingered for a while, so we climbed back over the fence, so as not to attract more attention to me standing under the bleachers with my pants down. It was pretty traumatic at the time, and now kind of funny. Another very interesting, sad part of Pompeii was that there were actual molds of people’s bodies preserved in the form they were in when they were dying - for example, covering their faces or lying with their arms over their heads. There was even a mold of a little child. There were ancient snack bars, and a religious forum with typical Roman columns. It was such a surreal experience - to be able to not only learn about this sad story, but to walk where these real events happened an unbelievable, uncomprehensible amount of time ago. Equally impressive is the fact that this city was so well-preserved after so long. After spending a good 4 hours walking around, absorbing all of this, it was time to go. We stopped for a slice of pizza Napoletana, gelato and a café macchiatto for a pick me up and headed out to Sorrento....