Rob's Volcano Impression

After our constant travels our somewhat unplanned 5 day stay in the bay of Naples was an unexpected turn of events

After our 3 hour drive down to Naples we decided, given our 3 day stint in Rome, we had earned a nice chill day. On Sunday then we got moving again and cycled into Pompeii. After seeing so many Roman sites from Trier all the way down to Rome, Pompeii was really the most impressive. Seen above is Vesuvius from the forum in Pompeii.

One of the most spectacular parts of Pompeii were the sealed rooms that had been covered by a thick layer of volcanic ash leading to incredible levels of preservation. This room, for example, had some really cool painted walls demonstrating the gaudy nature of Roman interior design missing in the perfectly white marble that usually survives to us in the present day. This room, part of one of the several bath houses in Pompeii also had a completely intact hypocaust and flumes (the heated underfloor and walls).

One of the really spectacular features of Pompeii is the survival of so much of every day life that was destroyed elsewhere. Here is an example of a Roman bakery which was complete with mill stone grinders for the grain, the top half of which can be seen on the furthest away one. In one bakery a loaf of Roman bread, still in the oven, had survived! These sorts of insights into Roman cooking, lifestyles, and patterns of work make Pompeii one of the most valuable Roman sites anywhere in the world. Featured is also one of the many many cats that seem to just hangout in Pompeii.

After travelling through so many sites from the Roman world, that at its greatest one moment encompassed over 70 million people, it was quite startling coming face to face with an inhabitant of that world. These famous Pompeii plaster casts were spread all around Pompeii. Made by pouring plaster into the holes in the thick layer of ash made by the decomposed bodies these casts preserve in dark detail the last moments of many of Pompeii's citizens.

Strangely one of the features of Pompeii that drew my attention the most was the streets. We have by now seen Roman streets in different levels of preservation in Koln, Roselle, and Rome but so many parts of these streets are so well preserved in Pompeii. Firstly, the strangely modern distinction between pavement and road, then the pronounced cart tracks all across the city on these roads, and finally the cross walks created by these rocks in the road, implying a universal standard size of cart wheels.

Pompeii, initially intended to be half a day, ended up taking a whole day to explore all of its details so we resolved to spend a bit longer in the Bay of Naples and go up Vesuvius on Monday but unfortunately Rob's body had other plans. 12 hours of violent vomiting later we decided that maybe another day not doing very much was on the cards. 

Finally on Tuesday, 3 days after arriving in Pompeii we went up Vesuvius. Despite this turning out to be a fairly complicated bureaucratic process, the views from the top on an incredibly clear day were spectacular.

One of the benefits of staying in the same coastal park up for so many days is that we managed to get an awesome sunset over the bay as well. We also got the benefit of seeing this little local community over a few days including the Italian regular dog walkers, many old men smoking cigars and looking out to sea, and that one car that crashed into Moira!