A Day in Pompeii

On Sunday we didn't check out until 11 am, so my bungalow mates and I packed and sat out on the porch and talked until our time to set out.

The drive to Pompeii took an hour and I listened to my iPod the whole time since they didn't put in a movie. Pompeii the modern city is very tiny and quaint, I would say it is the smallest Italian city I've seen--a one bancomat town!

Also, the vendors outside of Pompeii are the most insistent and aggressive of any I have ever met! If you like to haggle over prices than this would seem the paramount place to do it--especially since I think these were also the most expensive souvenir stands I've ever encountered. Luckily I found a nice young gentleman who really did let me go with some great deals and some free things (comparatively speaking).

After the touristy shopping we ventured down the hill to the original "port" entrance to Pompeii and entrance to the ruins.



We had a tour guide named "Antonio" who walked us through some of the major ruins. Without a guide, I'm sure we would have gotten lost, Pompeii was a very large city in its heyday, and archaeologists have only finished uncovering a little over half of it!



The above pictures show remains of the judicial seat of Pompeii. The city had a unique way of constructing strong columns from terracotta and plaster.


The above is a view of the main piazza which fronted the judicial building, multiple temples and the main marketplace. Some temples:



And the main marketplace building:


There were some remains of fresco but there were some other remains that people were more interested in seeing (warning... there are real bones from real bodies in the following pictures):







Nearby was a covered reservoir of many of the artifacts found by archaeologists that were not being kept in the museum.








Afterwards we entered the building that housed the Roman baths. Here we found more frescoes, interesting architecture and sculptures.






Afterwards we toured a few of the villas and saw mosaics, architecture and frescoes!









We toured more of the main roads and many small shops before we arrived at the most famous and most well preserved buildings in all of Pompeii, the brothel (note the larger amount of tourists here)!




We completed the trip and took more pictures down the main road. See how short Vesuvius appears? Before it blew its top it was white capped and 10,000 feet tall. When it erupted, it lost 7,000 feet of its height--burying the surrounding area and even filling in the sea port!



We had a short amount of time to walk back to the bus before it took off again, this time back to Florence. On the bus ride back we watched Talladega Nights, V for Vendetta and Wedding Crashers. We got back to Florence around 10:30 and walked back home to Mattonaia -- where we got marvelous sleep back in our own beds--not bungalows!