Pompeii and Vesuvius

Sunday found us again having a late start, so that we could get to Mass prior to heading off to visit Pompeii, the buried city that now lies unearthed on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius. Much debate was had regarding the relative merits of visiting Herculaneum, Pompeii and Vesuvius. In the end Herculaneum got the boot, or rather got put to last in the order of the day, which meant that when time ran out, it got the boot. Next time.

So Pompeii then. Once a thriving roman town, actually it was founded a long time before the romans got anywhere near it, but lets not get into history lessons. This is much more fun with just random facts... So Pompeii was once a thriving town, popular with the Romans not only as home for a whole load of them, but as a holiday destination for the rich ones. Apparrently the town was nearly levelled by an earthquake in 62AD (guessed at around 7.5 on the Richter scale - random fact about the Richter scale - it is an exponential scale which means that a 7.6 is 10 times stronger than a 7.5 quake. I remember being quite surprised at that when I learned that) which pretty much led to anarchy... they were just in the process of rebuilding it when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, burying the town and its inhabitants under a few metres of ash and rock. It lay in pretty much that state for the next 1700 years or so, until it was re-discovered in 1748. It has been heavily excavated since and now enjoys UNESCO world heritage status, receiving many millions of tourist visitors every year. So why is Pompeii so alluring? Well to be honest, i'm not entirely sure. There's lots of old stuff, including possibly the oldest known marketing pun, inscribed on a wine bottle - Vesuvinum. Nice.

On getting to Pompeii we got partially scammed by some parking attendants who sold us a crappy book with a tour in it, rather than pay for the audio guides, however they lied about the prices of the official audio guides, which I'm sure would have been much better and might have prevented us from getting lost. However in saying that, the place is vast. You think of places like this as being small - but this was a city that was home to many thousands of people, which I somehow managed to forget and as such - underestimated it's size. Anyway. We managed to see the best bits (not that we'd know the bits we missed!) including the biggest private house in Pompeii, the house of the fawn (note Mez' stylish pose) This place also had a really amazing mosaic on the floor in one part of a hunting scene which you can see here, though not that well... evidently the ancient Romans were keen on hunting - especially the rich ones.

The other thing that the ancient Romans were evidently keen on, is sex. Exhibits A and B are small fresco's painted above the doors to the public brothel. Each displays the resident lady's particular speciality. Interestingly the brothel had undersized beds, so that patrons didn't get too comfy - plenty more waiting to get through so they had to keep 'em moving!!! The Fresco of the guy weighing his schlong is from the main entrance to one house - meant to show how wealthy he was supposedly. That'd make a good tui ad I reckon. My picture's a display of wealth... yeah right.

What else... As you can see above and below, there are loads of interesting frescos painted on walls, fountains, monuments, and really bumpy roads. Even the mountain buggy struggled with it - glad i wasn't sitting in a horse or oxen drawn carriage with wooden wheels! Speaking of cart wheels - they have worn grooves into the stones of the roads which is quite amazing - you can clearly see the width of the axle of the carts they used, which makes envisioning the scenes some 1900 years earlier somewhat easier.

All sorts of professions plied their trades in Pompeii - including the bakers - from this ancient brick oven! There was amazing grinding stones on display there too that the bakers obviously used - not dissimilar to the ones we saw in Croatia in the Krka National park.

The public baths are an amazing spectacle of technology, art and of course a glimpse into roman way of life (photo below left is from inside the main bath house) - water systems were a huge part of what made the roman civilisation so... civilised! They had water fountains on most street corners so that everyone had access to free, clean, running water, not to mention the rich who had it running into their homes. Evidently there was a very clever priority system in the event of drought. Non essential services such as the Baths automatically lost their water first, followed by private houses and lastly the public fountains. Nice.

The Temples, amphitheatres, and gladiatorial training area were (in my opinion) the most striking - especially given that the partially restored temples (etc) are flanked by the massive shadow of Vesuvius, the final conquerer of Pompeii.

The day was HOT HOT HOT!!! so, after deciding we had seen enough of Pompeii - we headed off for a late lunch - in a random garden on the slopes of Mt Vesuvius.

Mt Vesuvius at 1281 metres above sea level, is one of those great 'cheat' mountains, that you can 'climb' with the assistance of your car - all but the last few hundred metres of height. Great drive again up the hair raising and nerve unsettling road which twists its way up the mountain, affording some stunning views along the way. Turns out this is the first volcano i've yet climbed that has such a distinct crater, as well as that great volcano shape. (Made an attempt or two on Ngauruhoe but always been thwarted by the weather) Cool pumicey scree climb up to the crater, along a track which is actually wide enough, and a shallow enough climb, for tiny four wheel drive cars to make it all the way to the top of the crater to sell the usual crappy souvenirs. Unfortunately we didn't get the best views in the world cos the cloud had started to gather in the late afternoon, so I have no stunning shots to show you of the bay of Naples from the crater of Vesuvius - but we did get a glimpse here and there between the clouds. And we did get a shot of the monster car... beautiful isn't she?

We were lucky enough to have time to sit still for a few minutes to watch a beautiful sunset from about half the way down the mountain, before heading back to Sorrento, which also looked stunning in the moonlight...