Max, Jeff, and I took the train to Pompei this morning. There is some kind of national celebration and the entrance is free today. The city was buried by the volcano Vesuvio about 2000 years ago and was only started to be uncovered in the last 150 years. Walking through the good sized city felt very different from other ruins I have been to. Pompei is so well preserved it feels like a city with real streets, sidewalks, houses, shops, ancient signs, mosaics, and frescoes. It was hard to believe how old it is. I was particularly struck by many of the streets with food stalls that have beautifully preserved L-shaped marble tiled counters with inset pots for food. They were set up exactly like a modern deli counter. Another fascinating part was the brothel. The entrance hall still has the graphic picture “menu” on the wall from which customers could choose. The remarkably well preserved frescoes in one structure, the hall of mysteries, were amazing. All through Pompei, I had a hard time getting the age of the city to correlate in my brain with what I was seeing. It was very cool. The picture is of one of the guys that were buried by the volcano.
After a morning in the endless streets of the ancient city we went to see its assailant, Vesuvio. We took a shuttle (16 euro including the 6.50 park entrance fee) from the train station up the mountain to the trailhead, maybe 100 vertical meters below the rim. The steep trail was covered with loose volcanic gravel and made for slipping feet as we went. One of the dynamics of a group of men is that no one wants to be unmanly and be the first to stop for a rest on the way, so we were all very manly and strode confidently straight to the top, never vocalizing the throbbing complaints of our leg muscles as we passed lesser people clinging to the railing and gasping for air. Peering into the vast caldron we were impressed before the free tour guide told us that the original volcano was actually the much larger rim still visible circling the base of the existing peak. The huge volcano we had climbed was only a cone inside of the much more massive one that destroyed Pompei. The amount of material that came off the original is mind boggling; it was beyond immense.
