Walking through the Ruins of Pompeii

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The ship docked in Naples and our internet directions for today were perfect. We found our way to the Circumvesuviana train station easily and purchased our round-trip tickets to Pompeii… we were there before 10am! Train tickets - 3 Euros… Guidebook - 8 Euros… Audioguide - 6.5 Euros… Admission - 22 Euros… experiencing Pompeii in person… Priceless.

We were both shocked by how well-preserved the ruins were - whole walls and buildings with paintings on the walls and mosaic tiles on the floor! The town is large and we explored all day. The civilization in Pompeii was incredibly advanced and lived over 2000 years ago. The architecture is marvelous and the large structures (theatres, amphitheatre) are awesome. Building materials included a mixture of brick, stucco, cement and marble. The bath houses were incredibly ornate and the artwork throughout the city was surprisingly well-preserved. Frescos still cover the walls in many buildings and mosaic tiles cover the floors. When you consider that Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered Pompeii in ash in only 79 AD, it makes all the remains and artwork even more impressive.

There were a couple of casts of people who were killed in Pompeii. When excavation had begun, a worker found a cavity in the hardened ash with bones at the bottom. A scientist had the ingenious idea of pouring plaster into the cavity in the rock and then chipping away the rock from around the hardened plaster. What remained was an exact copy of the person who was killed - in the exact position they were in when they were overcome with ash.

Pompeii is huge and we only walked about 20% of the streets in the 5 hours we had. We now wanted another day to explore the archeology museum in Naples where much more of the original artwork and mosaics from Pompeii are housed. We may have to make our way back to this part of the world again.

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