Naples and Pompeii

 Dear Gentle Readers

Today we woke up early to catch a taxi into RomaTermini, the central train station. We have booked tickets on the Trenitalia to Naples where we plan to pickup our car.

The train station is immense. While we were standing there next to our luggage, a lady came up wearing an official looking tag around her neck and asked to see our tickets. She then guided us to which platform our train would leave from. As it was early, we decided to get a coffee so she took us to a coffee shop nearby. Victoria went off to "window shop" so I was left alone in the cafe. Two times the lady came back to see if we were ready to board our train. I tried to explain that Victoria had gone looking in shops, which I finally managed to make known to her. Victoria finally returned and the lady showed up again and took us to our platform. Then...she held out her hand and said "Tip". It suddenly dawned on us that we had been played and she was not an official working for Trenitalia. We had no cash at all with us so she said "ATM"? I reluctantly followed her to an ATM but it refused to recognise my YouTrip card, so she said "No problemo" and took me to another ATM. She certainly knew where they all were located. I drew out 100 euro and asked how much? She said 20, 10 each. Well played lady, well played.

You have to scan your tickets to be let through the turnstile to the platform. I had both tickets on my phone, so I scanned Victoria through then went through myself. We boarded a carriage but couldn't find anywhere to store our large bags. That's when I decided to look at the tickets a bit closer and found we were in the wrong seats, in the wrong carriage. We struggled off the carriage and onto the correct one, which had space for our large bags. When we got to our seats, two nuns were sitting in them. After we shooed them off  respectfully asked them to move, we took our seats.

The trip to Naples is just divine. The Italian countryside has rolling gentle hills covered in grape vines or olive groves. Centuries-old two storey stucco villas painted all colours under the sun dot the landscape. It is just magical and so different to Australia. All too soon the two hour trip was over and we struggled with our luggage out to find the car rental office. The instructions were very vague and we spent around 30 minutes going the wrong way only to find out the office is under the main concourse inside the train station.

Finally collected our car, it is a Peugeot and quite large, SUV style. We needed it that size to take all our suitcases, which it did but it is a bugger to drive. Italian roads, driveways and ramps are designed for smaller cars and driving the Peugeot is a challenge. Even getting it out of the parking lot was a challenge. I couldn't find the gear shift initially only to find a switch on the dashboard. It has had a few issues, not the least is that the rear camera display stays on after you shift out of reverse. When you finally dismiss it by tapping the X next to it, the Android Auto screen disappears and you only get the turns displayed on the central display but no moving map. I finally managed to find out how to correct that after a day of trying.

Back to driving on the right-side of the road, but after many trips to the USA I had no trouble at all acclimatising to the new way of driving.

Pompeii is only 30 minutes away from Naples so off we went, in plenty of time to meet up with our tour guide that we had booked for 2pm. If you're late, we won't wait for you, the booking stated. Well, how hard could it be, you ask. Bloody hard! It's the northern summer, school holidays and Saturday to boot. The road into Pompeii was jam packed, so that delayed us. Then I took a wrong turn and it took 20 minutes to get back to where we should have been. Consequently we missed our tour we had paid 44 euros for. When I got to the carpark, it had been designed for midgets driving Fiat Bambinos, the lots were so small and sandwiched between trees that our car was never meant for. To top it off, a portion was roped off with that dreadful orange netting used to close areas. As I was navigating past that, it caught the plastic trim of our right front wheel and ripped it off. There goes my excess, 2800 euros. Fortunately I have travel insurance which covers me for rental car excesses.

With Victoria out of the car and guiding me in, I managed to park the Peugeot in one of those ridiculously small bays and we headed off to see Pompeii.

This was our first glimpse of the Pompeii ruins. What is amazing is back before Vesuvius erupted, the water line was just here in the grassed area below. The eruption moved the water two miles away.

This was our guide and also full of information about Pompeii. If you ever come here (and I suggest you do) definitely get a guided tour because you learn so much more about Roman life that's been perfectly preserved for nearly 2000 years.

Ah yes, the culprit! This is Mount Vesuvius that erupted on that fateful day on 24th October A.D. 79 and buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Here's a fact - the people in Pompeii were killed by the suffocating ash, but in Herculaneum, it was a pyroclastic flow, a super-heated column of gas that flowed down the slopes of Vesuvius over Herculaneum. When the inhabitants breathed this in, it cooked their lungs from inside out. 

This is the Forum, the centre of social, political and commercial life in Pompeii. This place would have been crowded with people going about their daily lives. In the background you can see Vesuvius but also a smaller mountain to the right - that is Monte Somma. Before Vesuvius erupted, it was much smaller, level with Monte Somma. The lava built Vesuvius up to its current height.

This is Victoria sitting in the same spot where she was photographed 50 years ago on her last visit to Pompeii. I know because I scanned in the slide of her original visit and convinced her to recreate the photo for comparison when we get home. Victoria says she never saw very much of Pompeii on her original visit compared to how much we saw on this visit.

The ash perfectly preserved so many things, including this fine example of terrazzo paving.

Yes, this is exactly what you think it is. It is actually a pointer, which the next photo will explain better.

The phallus is pointing to a house of ill repute, and it was an indicator of what services could be found there. There were more of these "indicators" in Pompeii but they have all been dug up and are on display in the Pompeii Museum.

This is what awaited a prospective client - a very hard bed. It was to encourage - ahem - a quick service as the bed would be so uncomfortable. Time was money for these "merchants".

Most clients could not read, so these pictures illustrated the various "services" available, so the client could choose what he wanted by pointing to his requirement.

The roads were paved with large stones with a sidewalk either side for pedestrians. The roads were used by horse and carts, and often oxen.

And this was a crosswalk, with our guide standing on one stone. This enabled the pedestrians to cross the road without soiling their robes, because it was often flooded with water from the aqueducts. All the roads sloped downwards and the water helped flush away the animal wastes. The gaps allowed the carts to go through easily and you can see the rut carved into the stone by these carts to the left of the guide.

These pots set into the stone bench are the equivalent of our "fast food" stores. Food was kept warm in these pots by fires lit beneath. Wine was also stored in them but not heated of course. The only cooling available was ice and snow from the nearby mountains, but it was expensive to obtain so wines were room temperature.

This is a flour mill. The top part could have a rod inserted into the gap, wheat was poured into the top and using the rod, the mill was rotated against the lower stone where flour would emerge. Trouble is, minute ground up pieces of rock would be included in the flour which the inhabitants would ingest. That combined with the next photo served to shorten the Pompeiian lives to around 30-40 years,

This is the remains of Roman plumbing - lead pipe. We now know that lead is very poisonous but back then the Romans were ignorant of this fact. Ingesting lead along with the rock fragments effectively reduced their lifespan.

Rooms in Roman villas did not have doors, instead curtains ensured privacy when needed. Here you can see the curtain rings preserved perfectly. The original curtains are long gone, unfortunately.

And this is the centre of one of those Roman villas, this one perfectly preserved by the ash from Vesuvius. There was always a centre courtyard surrounded by rooms under the roofs held up by magnificent columns.

The real piece de resistance is these, plaster casts of the original occupants who died during the eruption. One of the leading archeologists excavating Pompeii in the 1860s, Guiseppe Fiorelli realised the hollow spaces they were uncovering were the cavities left by the bodies decomposing over time. He drilled small holes in the ash, filled the voids with plaster and let it harden. The ash was then chipped away to leave a perfect cast of the poor inhabitant.

They were often found with their hands over their mouths and nose, trying to avoid being suffocated by the ash, but failing dismally.

Here you can see the remains of their clothing in folds in the plaster on their shoulders.

Here you can see the remains of bone in the toes of one of the victims. The cancellous interior of bones is clearly visible.

It's hard to believe with all the ruins we saw that only 40% of Pompeii has been excavated. This picture to the left is one area that has yet to be excavated. This is why Victoria saw so little 50 years ago.

There was so much more that we saw but it would take too long to tell and show. This is definitely a bucket list item ticked off for me. Next the incredible drive to the Amalfi Coast.