Pompeii

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Ever since I was a little kid, reading my parents' Time Life books on Italy, I've wanted to visit Pompeii. Yesterday, that dream came true.

We hopped a confusing set of trains from Rome and finally got off at a tiny little stop known as Pompei Scavi, then simply walked down a short street to the entrance for the ruins. We paid our fees and entered the gate. We stayed nearly six hours.

I had listened to a Yale University series on Roman architecture and was expecting to be able to enter every set of ruins mentioned, but it didn't work like that. In fact, it seemed like much of the site was closed. We walked down the main street, crowded with tour groups, then made a couple of turns on our way to the arena and suddenly it was just the two of us, alone, on a little side street in Pompeii. It was pretty cool, even though we couldn't enter many of the buildings. We continued walking to the arena, the oldest and best preserved Roman arena in the world. There were a few other people there, but not many. It was the kind of experience that I'd hoped for but figured was impossible. After all, we were at the famous Pompeii, along with hundreds of other people. But the site is 12 acres, meaning if we had the time and inclination to walk around, we could have a pretty awesome experience, despite the heat.

After visiting the arena, we began wandering down the narrow side streets, with their huge pavement stones still intact. Imagine that, walking on the same stones that the Pompeiians had in 79 AD. Although we weren't able to enter many of the buildings, we could look inside the doorways and get a glimpse of the decorations inside. We turned down one street close to the main thoroughfare and were surprised to see a crush of tour groups, jostling each other to get inside one narrow doorway. Turns out it was a brothel. We made ourselves small and passed as close to the wall as possible. We didn't feel the need to stand in line for very long.

After a quick lunch at the Pompeii Cafe (yes, there really is one), I dragged Brian all the way across the site to the opposite side to see a place called the Villa of the Mysteries. I'd learned that building had the best preserved frescoes in all of Pompeii. It did. We spent probably a good half hour there alone, maybe more. There were only about a dozen other people in this large villa. No other tour group bothered to walk that far. Thank you, tour operators, for making our experience of Pompeii a good one, except for that main street.

Rebecca

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