We headed to the place where we were meeting our bus at 7:15 and the second we arrived I knew that we were going to have a problem. Instead of a luxurious charter bus I was expecting, there was a 15 passenger van waiting to take us to Pompeii and we were the last group of people to arrive, so I would be sitting in the back of this "bus". My first thought was that I was going to have to skip out on the very expensive day trip I paid for because I would not have survived in the back of the van.
However, thankfully our tour organizer allowed me to sit in the front between her and the driver. The drive was about 2 hours to Pompeii and I napped for a good portion of it. Once we arrived in Pompeii we met our tour guide who was a different person than our organizer and she got us set up with headphones so that she could talk in a microphone instead of trying to yell so all of us could hear her.
This was outside the gates of Pompeii. Which is the largest open aired museum in the world!
Pompeii was huge city of between 12,000-15,000 people who were all simultaneously killed on August 24 79AD. This was caused by large clouds of hot ash and poisonous smoke that swept over the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted.
These people were absolutely brilliant! They built their streets lower than the rest of the city purposely so that when they were flooded with waste and rubbish it could be contained. They even built stepping stones to cross from one side of the street to the other. I like this picture particularly because you can see the indents the wagon wheels made in the stone between the stepping stones.
This is an ancient bakery! How do they know that? Well in the oven in the back of the shop, they found 80 pieces of carbonized bread! If that doesn't scream bakery, I'm not sure what does!
Another cool fact that makes these people so brilliant was their indents for doors. These grooves would be made at the opening of shops so that when the sliding doors (like garage doors) would be pulled down over the entrance, it would make it harder for people to open the doors back up!
There are over 40 fountains throughout Pompeii and some of them are even still functioning to provide cool water for tourists throughout the city. Lead pipes were used to connect the water system while Pompeii was still a functioning city, don't worry, they aren't still in use today. The emperor of Pompeii, Augustus, built the city's water structure through aqueducts and incorporated water pressure systems that the rich could use to bring water into their homes.
These two images are take from the ancient spa that was discovered in Pompeii. The squares were storage facilities where the visitors could place their items before heading to the hot or cold bath. Because of the pipes that ran throughout the city, they were able to get enough hot water and steam to hold a sauna room.
This was the large marketplace of town where you can get an awesome view of Mount Vesuvius. We were told that the marketplace was pedestrian only because there was no traces of wagon wheels or hoof prints in this area.
In the corner of the marketplace, there was a large storage area that housed some of the relics that were uncovered in Pompeii. Some of these include casts of people and animals, such as the dog.
Another cool fact that showed the brilliance of the people of Pompeii was their system of lighting for night time. Because they obviously didn't have streetlights, they placed pieces of marble in the ground between stones, so that when the moon shone on the marble pieces, the light would reflect and light the path.
Unfortunately, if you go to Pompeii, you will also notice that many of the buildings are in rubble. Well, Titus, the emperor (not sure what he was the emperor of) thought that the destruction of Pompeii was a sign of anger from the Gods, so he ordered that all the large buildings be taken down. (not exactly sure what it was going to prove, but he was the emperor, so he could do what he wanted)
Pompeii was excavated in 1745, it had been covered for over 1,500 years! In fact, not everything is still uncovered today! They are still uncovering parts of the city slowly but surely!
After our 2 hour tour in Pompeii, we piled back in the van and this time I was very grateful to be in the front seat because we hit traffic on our way to Positano. Not only did we hit traffic, but because we were driving on the coast, the road was very curvy. In fact, our journey into the city of Positano was filled with a ton of hairpin turns, our van was so large that our driver had to back up quite a few times to make the turn.
Now I don't know much about the history of Positano, but I do know that it's beautiful and I want to go back. The Almalfi Coast is protected by UNESCO, which means that people cannot expand and build on anymore land! So people do a lot of renovating and the housing prices are expensive! As you can see from the picture, there isn't much of a downslope from the city to the beach, in fact there really isn't any beach either. The city is stacked on top of one another and there are a lot of stairs that one must hike when walking throughout the city.
I'm determined to come back to the Positano, heck any part of the Almafi Coast because we only got an hour to enjoy the city due to the traffic from Easter Weekend. However, I'm not sure that I would want to drive in, so I'm thinking a nice cruise to the Almafi Coast is in order!
One thing this cute town is known for is their lemons! I wish I could have shown you the comparison, but to give you a rough estimate, they are larger than a grapefruit! However, even with their large size, they still don't give out much juice. In fact, the skin of the lemons in Positano are just incredibly thick! Most of the tourist shops held some sort of lemon flavored candy, drinks or pictures with lemons painted on them. I ended up getting some beautiful lemon candy that I still haven't finished!
Before we headed back to the van, we stopped and got a treat of frozen lemonade and it was delicious!!! But all too soon we had to pile back in the car for the long trip home. In fact it was a long trip, remember the traffic I mentioned earlier? Well it came back to bite us in the butt because instead of taking 2 1/2 hours to get home it took 6 hours to get back!!! But I did get to have a lovely conversation with our tour organizer while we waited in the car for that long. I learned some pretty interesting facts about Italy, and while it might be nice to visit, I don't think I would want to live there.
Lin (our tour organizer) told me that because health care is free in Italy, everyone is treated the same unless you can afford a private doctor. So if you go into the hospital with a heart attack or a stroke, you will be waiting in line behind everyone else who arrived before you, which could be DAYS! If you end up getting cancer, unless you are very well off, they usually give you pain medication and are told to say your goodbyes. The government in Rome is pretty corrupt. When an individual is elected into office, they raise a bunch of money for a certain project and then they leave the office and take the money with them. In fact, a tunnel we drove through to get to and from Positano took 20 years to build!!! (While it was a long tunnel, and when I say long, we were in there for 10 minutes driving at about 60 mph, I still couldn't believe it took that long!)
We finally arrived back in Rome at 10:45 and we were RAVENOUS!!! We headed to McDonalds (Yuck!) to get some dinner because it was the only thing open. After reading Fast Food Nation in high school, I refuse to eat any sort of real food there, so I just ordered an ice cream cone and some french fries. We finally made it back to our hostel at 11:30 and by that point we passed out very quickly because we had to get up early for our train to leave to Florence.
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