Travelling along the highway we saw some lovely scenery, deserted farmhouses, small and large towns and Mt Vesuvius. Didn’t stop at Naples as it wasn’t on our itinerary.
It was a bit hot when we all piled out of the bus at the entrance to the ruins of Pompeii (a UNESCO World Heritage site). It was around noon so we had time to get something to eat and drink. Seeing this little drink stand I wandered over to it and believe it or not, these lemons were real, so I bought myself an icy cold lemon drink. It turns out they grow these lemons to make limoncello, an Italian liqueur I really like.
This post continues on the journey I took with my son in 2010 around the world. If you would like to see the story so far you can start it all here.
LINK: My First World Trip : Where It All Started
We were now also within range of an active volcano with one of the most household names, Mount Vesuvius. The volcanic earth here provides great growing soil for crops so they still have farms right on the side of the mountain. It is still an active volcano and while it has heaps of monitors as an early warning system in case it erupts, it takes a certain type of person to grow crops around it.
Pompeii had between 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants at the time of its final destruction, due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius on August 24, 79 CE. It was a walled city and quite advanced for its time.
Walking through a lovely park we began to see the remains of the town. It’s been painstakingly excavated and a lot has been restored with the help of modern technology. Other buildings have been left as they were. Due to the dumping of two 3 meter high ash banks on the town and then getting covered in a pyroclastic flow (a mix of hot ash, rock fragments and gas) everything was very well preserved, even the people that died there. It was up to 23 feet or 7 meters under the earth.
Amusingly the first part of town that was uncovered was the red light district or brothels and then the rest of the town. Personally I found the preservation of the tiles and paintings on the walls more interesting.
There were little stepping stones across the roads so the people did not get their feet wet when crossing, which was quite amusing. The roads were built in Roman times and as well as rain water would have had slops and animal manure all over them.
Some of them were small stones but as you can see from below there were others on the main streets that were quite large. The roads were also quite small as well, nothing like the multi-lane highways we have today.
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The people like a lot of people across Europe were short, my kind of people. You can see below me standing in a doorway and I can easily touch the top of the door frame.
Another amazing find as they excavated was the bread ovens as they still had the bread preserved in them as well. They found 85 loaves of bread in one of the more commercial ovens that was excavated. A little bit too hard to eat now and well past its use by date.
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The brothel was very interesting from a purely practical standpoint as they must have had a lot of cushions as the beds didn’t look that comfortable. They definitely don’t compare to the latex topper spring mattresses of today. There were also heaps of paintings on the walls, which it was assumed to get the people in the mood.
The bodies that have been found preserved range in detail depending on what they were doing at the time of the eruption. The poses they were found in are either curled up when they ran out of oxygen or when they were completely covered and trying to protect themselves from the falling debris.
They also uncovered the ampi-theature which while not as big as the Coliseum in Rome would still have held quite a few people and probably another thing built during Roman times. One thing I really noticed was that it was very quiet.
We finally wrapped up this part of the trip with a stop for food and as you know it’s one of the main reasons I love to travel. To taste all the beautiful food around the world! There is a fine balance between eating lovely food and making sure you get enough steps in each day while you are travelling.
On this occasion though it was not that great. We stopped at a little restaurant to have a Neapolitan pizza and we were not impressed. I guess we are too used to Dominos and Pizza Hut and the pay per kilo pizza in Rome with all the lovely flavours on them. The pizza base was doughy and the topping was quite bland like someone had just dumped a tin of tomatoes on it. Maybe some more spices and better cheese would have lifted it a little. Definitely not going back there any time soon.
NEXT STOP: Isle of Capri and Sorrento