Oh, Vesuvius, you sneaky little mountain

Hello, all! Sorry it's been so long since my last post, I'm not so great at maintaining these things... just one of those things I need to work on I guess.

Anyway, two weekends ago I was able to go on the school-sponsored trip to Pompeii. Sadly none of the roommates were able to join, including Emily and Joey, but I was looking forward to it nonetheless. I didn't quite know what to expect- I'd heard and read about this ancient site for years, but never really had I had a clear understanding of what it looks like now- like the roman ruins? like abandoned cities we have today? a crypt? So, needless to say, I was quite excited to actually go.

After a long bus ride (+/- four hours), we arrive at the hotel we will be staying at in the modern city of Pompei, in the region of Napoli. A surprisingly lively city, considering what lies on the other side of the fence. And, actually, the ancient city of Pompeii is just on the other side of a gate from the modern city. Walking down the road, you would never know you are about to enter the ruins if it weren't for all the vendors outside of the gate trying to sell you souvenirs of Pompeii / Italy. So we enter the site on a beautiful, warm day, ready for anything. Everything seems to open up around me as we enter. Ruins, if I haven't mentioned this before, are one of my favorite places in cities, because they are so open and clear and green and quiet. Incidentally, the first road we walk down leads us through the old cemetary... it was odd how well preserved all the tombs were, in this city that really is a tomb in itself. It is also very cool how the cobblestoned streets preserved the grooves from the bronze wheels of ancient carts. And all the streets are still paved in their orginal cobblestone/ pavingstone, complete with stepping stones across some of the intersections so people wouldn't have to step through the muck of the streets. The whole ruins are cool. I thoroughly enjoyed it... I'm also just kind of nerdy that way. For those of you who aren't as into history / as nerdy as I am, Pompeii was silenced and preserved in 79 AD when Mount Visuvius erupted, covering the city in volcanic ash, and killing the inhabitants with noxious fumes and... volcanic ash. Because of this terrible act of nature, we now have a well-preserved ancient Roman site! And it is well-preserved. In the houses (the ceilings have since degraded/eroded away in many, though not all, cases) we can still found beautiful paintings, frescoes, mosaics, etc. The colors are so vibrant!! It's unreal thinking that they are 2000 years old. Animals, geometric designs, people, advertisements, landscapes, graffitti... all can be found in the buildings. It was refreshing seeing some good old-fashioned happy paganism.
So, lets talk about the people of Pompeii. They were small. Both short and thin. Also, contrary to the ideas that articles tended to put in my head, they are not all over the streets, preserved in agony. Maybe they were, but now there are a handful on display behind glass in one of the houses, as well as some stacked non-chalantly on shelves in storage rooms by the Forum. Very strange to see. If you see a body of one of the citizens of pompeii, what you are seeing is a plaster cast of the cavity the body left in the ash. The soft, organic material began decomposing as soon as it was uncovered, so this is the solution the archeologists or whomever came up with. It's really interesting, because on some of them you can see casts of the clothing and shoes, and some have bones (skull or finger bones generally) sticking out of the edges of the plaster. The actual bones. It was interesting, sad, strange, and a little surreal knowing that these people were actually people who lived, worked, played, in the streets of this ancient city; they had names, and families, and were part of the unlucky number who were unable to flee the horrors of the nearby volcano. Any yet, in this unlucky tragedy they suffered, they survive, in a way.... they allow us to study their lives, learn about the daily life of ancient Romans, the history of Western civilization, etc. I felt a little bad taking pictures, but I had to. I couldn't not document this moment for myself. So, yes, it was cool. We walked the streets of almost everything that has been uncovered (about 2/5 of the city remains covered), exploring houses, brothels, baths, temples, bars, shops, courtyards, etc. We then took our bus to Herculanium (by the sea!). Now, Herculanium is slightly different from Pompeii in two ways. 1. It was attacked by the volcanic eruption differently (namely lava), and thus has been able to preserve different elements of the city; and 2. A modern city has been built on top of the ancient site, which makes it a little difficult to uncover the majority of the site. Somehow, because of the lava rather than ash, wood was preserved in many places. Wooden window frames, ceiling rafters, etc. can still be found- they look like charcoal, all black and burned-looking, but they remain. It's pretty wild. Not much in the way of bodies, more skeletons, and most of the skeletons or other interesting object you see in the ruins are plaster casts of the original, which lie in the museum at the entrance (built but never opened in the 70s... it is now falling apart itself from lack of use and maintenance. Italian organization at its finest.)

After a full day of walking along ruins, we watched the sunset from Mt Vesuvius, then bussed back to the hotel. A friend (and roommate for the weekend) and I found some DELICIOUS and relatively cheap pizza, then sneakily took the elevator to the topmost floor of our hotel- which, come to find out, is the roof. So we hung out up there for a while, looking at the city spread out beneath us, lit up in the night, with lights on roads of distant mountains making strings of diamonds in the darkness. It was pretty cool.

Naples, the following day, consisted of museums and longing glances toward the beautiful park outside, full of families enjoying their Sunday in the sun and grass. Then lunch on the harbor next to a castle (that apparently at one point in its history housed a jail, and an escaped alligator which may or may not have been the cause of several prisoners' dissappearances, then masked as "escapes"), then back on the bus for Florence!