Advertisement
Published: October 9th 2008
Hannah and I
In front of the ruins at PompeiiFollowing on from Sorrento, we headed towards Naples and stopped off at the ruins of Pompeii for a day trip. We hooked ourselves onto an English speaking guide who took us around the best bits for a few hours. It is amazing what has been preserved, and like the guide mentioned, any city like this that wasn’t buried would have had the stone stripped from the place to build other things. So that makes Pompeii pretty unique. That and it has been buried under ash from a volcano, excavated and is now a huge tourist attraction.
Anyway, the city is in fantastic condition and almost all the walls are standing, just the roofs are missing. Also the artwork that decorated the walls and floors of the home is also in very good condition, and the colours are still bright. I bet even Dulux doesn’t give a 2,000 year guarantee! As you will see from the photos, Mt Vesuvius is now in a semi M type of shape. Apparently it used to be a perfect upside down V, think Mt Taranaki, but the force of the eruption blew a huge chunk of it out! Also, what killed the inhabitants wasn’t the
Forum ruins
With Mt Vesuvius in the background. Apparently it was a perfect triangular shape, but when it erupted, it did so with such force, it blew the chunk out of it! lava, but the gases that escaped at the time of the eruption and killed them before they could escape. One other thing that exaggerated the death toll was that the free men who owned slaves locked the slaves in so they couldn’t escape; thinking to come back for them after the eruption had passed. I bet they were surprised when they came back and the whole city was buried!
And as is shown in a couple of other photos, some of the bodies were very well preserved - so well that you can even tell their station in life. Slaves all wore belts with their owners initials, while free men wore rings with their names. This is because, when slaves were set free, they were given a ring and their own last name. I wonder if this is where the marriage custom came about? Anyway, the city was quite open in other ways, as brothels were quite frequent, and there were even ‘road markings’ pointing the way there for out of towners!
After our time in Pompeii, we carried on up to Naples. We had a bit of a walk from the station to the hostel, and on
More forum ruins
In very good condition for 2,000 years old and being buried under ash. the way, we went down the main shopping street. Not the smartest idea, and it meant I went and had a look at all the historical stuff by myself while Hannah further damaged her credit card. We met up for some dinner in the place where pizza was born and sampled some of the best. Very good, but again, I’d still prefer Hell.
The following day was Hannah’s last with me on the trip as we quickly had a look at a local castle and museum in Naples before taking the train up to Rome. Before she had to fly out, we had time for a whirlwind tour where we went and saw the Trevi Fountain, Vatican City, Bridge of Angels, Spanish Steps, and of course, tried some more gelati. I waved Hannah off and went and saw a bit more of Rome by night before crashing into bed.
The following morning, I went and visited my favourite monument in Rome, the Collosem, before catching train and heading deep into the lush countryside of Tuscany. The next, and final part of my Italian Odyssey sees me head up through Tuscany and finishing in Venice before flying back to
Slave
Preserved slave - you can tell it's a slave because they all wore big belts. The free men wore rings. London for a rest!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.145s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 21; qc: 86; dbt: 0.1044s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 9;
; mem: 1.3mb
