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This morning was sunny, despite the calls for rain. Our plan today is to visit the ruins of the two cities that were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius: Herculaneum and Pompeii. On the way to the train station, we stopped on the bridge again and were able to get our email and confirm the booking of an apartment in Rome. It is always a relief when the next part of the accommodation puzzle falls in place.
We planned to visit the travel agent this morning to buy bus tickets for Rome, but they never turn up, despite having told us yesterday to come back at 9 am. In the end we phone and find out that we can just buy tickets on the bus, though they will cost a bit more.
We take the regional train to the station for the ruins at Herculaneum. We are almost as casual as the locals now about the stunning sea view out the train window on the way.
Last time I was here I came by chartered bus so I'm not sure how to get from the train station to the ruins. As it turns out though, it is easy
enough to follow the groups of people until some landmarks become familiar.
The Entrance to Herculaneum is quite well set up, as you walk along a sort of bridge leading past the ruins on your way to the ticket office. This provide a tantalizing peek of the site as well as giving a good overview to the layout. The ruins here were mainly covered in mud and were much better preserved than those in Pompeii. The tiled roofs remain and even the wood in places, dating back to before the birth of Christ.
Once we paid the entrance, we followed the paths down into the excavated town. Last time I was through here, we were a school group with a guide and this time without. We find it a bit hard sometimes to know what sort of a building (ex: private house, store etc) we were in, though the map did help with some of this.
In the private houses here, the frescoes are amazingly well preserved in vivid colours. For the most part the buildings are well looked after, though I was distressed to see recent graffiti in places: something that you would never see in
places like Angkor Wat or even the ruins in Greece. This said, there are some incredibly well preserved buildings including a sophisticated bath complex with various rooms for different temperature steam baths and cold baths. It is mind boggling to think that you are walking on tiles that date back 2000 years to the birth of Christ.
We wandered around the ruins for about an hour, and then walked back out of the excavation to have our picnic lunch looking over it from walkway above it.
We managed to get mixed up with the trains for our second site today: Pompeii. When we finally got there I think we were all a bit tired of walking and opted to follow a short tour on the map rather than try to see the whole thing.
The site at Pompeii is far larger than Herculaneum , though not as well preserved. In the bookstores they sell children's flip books that overlay and image of what each part would have looked like with the image of the ruins. Seeing this helps you imagine what the building and streets would have looked like in their prime.
Despite being not as well
preserved as Herculaneum (Pompei was covered in ash rather than mud), there are some interesting frescoes here, some of which were being carefully cleaned and restored as we watched. Also interesting (though somewhat macabre) are the twisted remains of people (and animals) that died from the gases in the explosion. These bodies were almost frozen in time as they were made into casts by the ash.
Being an bigger place, it is easier to see the whole life of a town here. The bakery and the ovens where bread was made are well preserved. On the more lively side of life, there is a brothel with small rooms and tiled images on the walls visually detailing the services that can be performed. You feel a bit weird taking pictures of these mosaics, but then, all the other tourists are too.
In the original cobble stone roads that run between the buildings here, you can see the rut marks made by ancient chariots. We followed the streets back towards the outskirts of the ancient town where the stadium and the gladiator practice grounds are. From the vantage point above this complex, you can easily imagine the whole life of
this city.
Back in Sorrento, we managed to find some of Benjamin and Joshua's favorite foods for dinner: steak for Benjamin and Cordon Bleu for Joshua. Tonight is our final night in this wonderful apartment. If we hadn't already booked Rome and Florence, we would have loved to have stayed a few more days here as it is a beautiful place and has turned out to be quite affordable, but we have already set the dates for our next two cities.
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