 |
| Mother-oldest daughter pic in the forum |
Monday, 2 June
Today was Pompeii!! I have always wanted to go to Pompeii!! It was less that I expected. But it was very cool, walking the streets and into what is left of the buildings. It probably would have been much more informative with a tour guide (but also 50-100 euros more expensive--depending on the size of the group). I was expecting little placards up describing things--that also would have helped. The streets were for the runoff--rain, etc. and for wagons to travel down them. They eventually built sidewalks (probably because people would not want to walk in that!) and put rocks in the middle for people to cross, but they left spaces between for the wagons to continue to travel! Those Romans were so clever!
 |
| A Roman street with the walking stones |
 |
| Annie being clever! |
Evidently, they removed most of the tiles and other such things and put them into a Naples museum (we had hoped to see them in their natural setting). In a storage area, we saw shelves upon shelves full of old terra cotta urns and other pottery. (I guess they weren't special enough for the museum!).
In with the urns and in one of the bath houses, we saw plaster casts of some of the bodies that were trapped in the ash. Shelby and I saw some at the Pompeii exhibit at the Science Museum several years ago, these were different ones. Annie had been hoping that they would have been located where they actually had been found. I think that would have been more profound.
 |
| In the storage area (behind bars) |
 |
| We found this in one of the baths |
 |
| This was also located in the baths |
We found some beautiful courtyards as we wandered around, then we decided that we would be there for days and we needed to focus a bit if we also wanted to see the highlights. We saw the amphitheater and the coliseum and the forum at the end. They were very big. My favorite parts were the baths (though I've already seen the ones in Bath) and the forum. One of the baths still had some tile work, plaster work and paint still on the walls which was very exciting (I know, I'm a geek!). Then the forum was tons of pillars everywhere--very Roman (which appealed to my romantic sensibilities).
 |
| Detail in the baths |
 |
| The baths |
 |
| The amphitheater |
 |
Mount Vesuvius in the bakground--who knew what
destruction that nice backyard view would bring? |
 |
| Two tough girls in the coliseum |
 |
| Scary boy in the coliseum |
 |
| More celing details |
 |
| Some of the painting still on the walls |
 |
| More ceiling detail |
The bodies in pompeii were a bit gruesome... my imagination gets away with me when I think about what their last moments might've been. ugh.
ReplyDeleteYes, suffocating to death. Some of the body casts we saw at the Science Museum were of children and a pet dog. Very moving.
DeletePompeii was nice, but I agree that it's not what one would expect. It's a lot of hype!
ReplyDelete