Italy Day 2 - Pompeii (23 Apr 2007)

The morning started a little slow as we tried to adjust to the new timezone. Italy is at GMT+1 (6 hours ahead of the East Coast of the USA). We had breakfast at the hotel, which included croissants and strong Italian coffee. We walked to the train station once again and got on the train toward Sorrento. In the station we met a couple of newly graduated medical students from Texas. It took about 40 minutes to get to Pompeii. Once there, we used our passes to get our tickets. Normal price is €10. They recommend at least 3 hours, however, we spent 7 and still didn't see everything. We had to stop since we'd both lost all feeling in our feet. The pain was well worth it though. The ruins are amazing and they continue to find more all the time. A lot of the buildings are in very good condition. They still have many of the mosaics and paintings intact. There are tons of intact pottery everywhere. In several locations, they have plaster casts of people that were found among the ashes. After all day hike through Pompeii, we took the train back to Naples. We had dinner at a great pizza place 3 blocks from our hotel. We shared a margarita pizza that was about as big as the table. Afterwards, we walked up the street and got a piece of tiramisu. Pizza was a 5 tiramisu was a 3. We walked back to the hotel through the trash filled streets of Naples. After such a long day, it was easy to fall to sleep!

The pictures below are of some of the remains of people in Pompeii. They actually found the remains as a hollow area in the ash. They would fill the volume with plaster and then remove the ash to give them a mold of the body that was once there. The second picture shows one of the most well preserved houses in the area. The mosaics and paintings are in near perfect condition.