Italy, Day Four: Pompeii and Herculaneum

A few days before we left, I discovered Naples was only an hour from Rome by train, and Pompeii another 40 minutes or so via commuter rail. This seemed like a perfect day trip, and something I might never get around to seeing otherwise. We decided to go for it.

Everyone says Naples is basically a third world country. We didn't leave the main train station, but even so the vibe was definitely different. There were signs absolutely everywhere bewaring of pickpockets.

The train to Pompeii was crowded and, upon arrival, you are immediately descended upon by people trying to upsell you into expensive tours. I had learned from this experience at the Colosseum so we walked straight to the ruins themselves and went right in.

At first glance, it seems like this isn't going to be a big deal - it looks like any other ruins.

Then you start to see pieces of mosaics that haven't survived in most places.

And so much art. There are frescoes everywhere, in varying states of preservation.

It is also huge. I didn't really realize - although I've always heard, of course - that Pompeii was a city. And, for the most part, the whole city survives. We walked around for at least a couple of hours and only saw a small fraction.

In some areas you could see where frescoes have been cut out of the wall - by thieves, I assume.

The level of detail makes you realize what an incomplete picture we get of ancient civilizations when this stuff isn't preserved, when what we see is only the remaining crumbled stone walls.

There were tons of people in Pompeii, mostly tour groups. If you avoided the main hotspots there were a lot of peaceful areas, though.

This cat was utterly unconcerned with tourists.

The grooves on the streets from chariot wheels were clearly visible. We listened to a Rick Steves audio tour as we walked and he pointed out one area where the grooves abruptly stopped - because they had been in the process of making repairs, replacing the stone, when the volcano erupted.

There is a large amphitheatre at one end of the city.

Lots of these shops survive - this one was some kind of money changer or bank, which they know because coins were found in each of the receptacles.

Vesuvius is visible everywhere, from Naples all the way south. It's still an active volcano.

On the way back, we got off the train at Herculaneum to compare. This site is smaller, because the modern day city rests on top of most of the ruins.

We discovered that the ruins were next to the sea, down a long long hill from the train station. By the time we got there, the thought of walking even more to get down into the site seemed way too exhausting. So we looked at it and then went to get ice cream. You can see, though, how the city is built over the top - they have tunneled a bit into the wall there but obviously it will never be as extensive as Pompeii.

We were exhausted and filthy - this was a long, hot day. But we managed to survive and make it back to our neighborhood in Rome, where we had one of the best meals of the trip at a sidewalk cafe.