Monday, February 26, 2007
Pompeii
Wednesday 21st February
After an expected 7 hour journey we arrived in Pompeii and Camping Spartacus! We are 5 minutes walk from the Pompeii ruins and took them in on the first day. The site of the ruins is a lot larger than we imagined and really gives you a feel for how a typical Roman city looked and felt. It has all been wonderfully preserved, even if most of the artefacts have been removed to a nearby museum. You can walk along the original streets and see the ruts made by carts. You can marvel at the interior decorations of some of the larger houses, with some intricate paintings as part of the wall decorations, there are also some glorious mosaic floors and altars in mosaic as well as some fabulous murals. You can wonder into some of the shops and see the counters still in evidence where spices or perfumes were sold. The amphitheatre, forum and small theatre are well restored. You can hear the acoustics in the small theatre and marvel at the simple and effective technology. Luckily we avoided the murals on the walls of the brothel, as I’m not sure how we would have answered the inevitable questions!
From the moment we told the boys of the ruins they were desperate to see “dead people”, and luckily we were not able to disappoint them and saw half a dozen casts of people who had died during the eruption. They have, however, decided that it is much too dangerous to go up to the volcano and have stated they will refuse to go! We shall see!
