We walked about a mile to our hotel after getting off the little train. The train lets you out so close to the entrance to the Pompeii ruins…and I thought I would never make it back there. As it turns out, there is a second entrance to the ruins about two blocks from our hotel, so that is the one we went to. We got a guide named Georgio and he was excellent. He told us about the building materials of the homes and how to tell if they were Greek (older) or Roman. The Greeks used large stacked stones…it would probably take 10 men to move one. The Romans used small stones they would find in the fields and fill in with cement which they invented. The 2000 year old walls are still in perfect shape, whereas repairs on wall with current day cement are cracking. All the walls were level…if they weren’t to start, they laid plaster over them to the depth needed to make them perfectly level. He showed us the houses of the rich with a winter side and a summer side, houses and shops of the shop keepers and homes of the plebes and slaves. He said the streets have ruts in them that are a certain width…from the wagons and chariots that drove over them for eons…and the width was two donkeys and the thing in the middle they were attached to. That width is still used today in train tracks. We went to see the stadium, older than the Coloseum in Rome. Criminals were taken there to fight to the death. If one remained, a professional gladiator would fight him and he was toast pretty fast. But, if a criminal put up a good fight and the crowd was pleased, they would kill him quickly. If not, he would have his throat slit and died more slowly…3-4 minutes of agony.
We got to see 13 casts of bodies which were found in a garden. They had been covered by the ash from Vesuvius. After Pompeii was discovered again in the 1800’s , plaster was poured into the cavities these bodies left and so we have plaster figures of the actual final pose of the people. One child still has a visible femur bone showing…because children have more calcium and harder bones. One father was in a position of reaching out to his wife and child…so he didn’t die instantly. Georgio told us the blast of Vesuvius was equal to 30 Atomic bombs. This happened in August of 79AD.
The last eruption of Vesuvius was in 1944. 27 people died…from heart attacks.
After the tour, we went to the cathedral of Pompeii. Mass was going on, so we just walked around. Every inch painted and gilded. Beautiful mosaics. You think you have seen the most ornate church, until you go to the next one. There is a beautiful bell tower next to the church, but neither of us wanted to climb it. We walked back almost to the hotel and realized the place for dinner has back near the cathedral, so we walked back and it was closed. We stopped at another place and had mussels in broth…wonderful! Of course, we haven’t had a bad meal yet. Finally back to the hotel. My legs hurt so bad I couldn’t get comfortable, so took a hot shower and some ibuprofen PM and got to sleep. Andy’s feet hurt from her pretty new pair of shoes. I have permission to shoot her if she ever wears them to sightsee in again. We slept well…and more of our adventure tomorrow. We are going to the crater of Vesuvius.