September 7, 2018
Day 4 was an amazing day. We visited Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius through a tour group I found online. It was kind of expensive but included costs such as picking us up from our hotel, and dropping us back off at the end, entrance fees to all sites, lunch, and of course the information provided at each site!
First stop was Pompeii. Taylor and I had seen a lot of the artifacts in the National Archaeological Museum earlier this week, so we were really excited to see the sites where it came from. 
This is outside the walls of Pompeii. Just as you enter through the gate. Where we are standing used to be underwater, and it doesn’t really look like it because there’s no scale (I’m a terrible geologist!), but those walls are pretty high!
This is a courtyard where the residents could walk around and “stretch their legs”. There is a theatre nearby, as well as store/booth areas for food, where operas could last for days and days! So this area here is for the people to walk around a little since they’re probably sitting all day long!
The floors of this place are incredible! It’s all marble and travertine, and all I can think is how expensive that stuff is!
This is what the streets look like. These pictures, and literally what we walked on, are the original streets of Pompeii before they city was covered in ash from Vesuvius! The three raised stones in the road are literally stepping stones, allowing pedestrians to cross the street. Apparently the streets also doubled as the sewer, so if you don’t walk on the stepping stones there’s a good chance you walk in poo. The other pictures here are to show the grooves from the chariots, pulled by horse. The width between the stepping stones are just wide enough for the chariot wheels, and from years and years of use they created grooves in the rock.
The top picture here is of a bakery! You can still see the arched oven! Now this bakery must’ve been good, because it is right in this little intersection, seen above. Within the intersection there is a fountain of water. I guess that’s their old version of Street signs! Most people could not read or write, so they used symbols for everything!
These two pictures are of the outer bath area. We are just inside the walls of the common “restroom” where people would do their business. There were no bathrooms in individual homes, so everyone would always have to use these communal ones! Here, we are standing in an area where men were allowed to work out. The bottom picture is of the old swimming pool, where women were allowed to join men in swimming.
Original paintings on the walls! Hard to tell by these terrible pictures I took, but they used to have colored paint!
Inside the bathroom! Everything had so much detail. The art on the ceiling and walls, and the beautiful marble and travertine floors, were so amazing and all original!!
The next place we went to was the brothel. Inside, there are “instructional” pictures to show the sailors and soldiers different options they may choose from. Basically all they had to do was point at what they wanted! And then there are these little rooms for business to occur. In case you were wondering, “but how do they find the brothel?”:
This is no joke. There is literally a penis etched into the road so that they know where to go. Very efficient use of symbols, I would say!
And here we are in the forum! I couldn’t remember much, but I do remember some scenes from “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”, and I was trying to picture those scenes here! It was so amazing and huge. Pretty much everything you see is original. The only things that might not be original are the statues, because a lot of them are in the museum we went to on Monday.
And that was about it for our quick journey through Pompeii. These are the last few images I took on our way out.
Then we headed to a nearby restaurant for a group lunch. We sat at a table with a couple from Canada, and of course they were super nice 🙃 it was nice to talk to people easily, I really wish I could speak Italian so I could communicate with the locals easier!
After lunch we headed to Vesuvius. The road up to the parking area has a lot of switchbacks and is basically a one-lane road. Our bus driver was a CHAMP. I swear he must be the best driver I’ve ever seen. He also had this great technique of honking his horn as he approached a turn, so that oncoming traffic would know of our approach! Sometimes it worked…sometimes it didn’t and I had to hold my breath!! If those windows could open, I could’ve signed my name on the other car we were so close!
The last stop was Vesuvius! I don’t have a lot of pictures, but here are the “good” (at best) pictures I have. The walk up is hard if you’re out of shape like me, and also kind of sketchy since it’s all basically ash and cobbles. The first picture is a view of the city as you walk up. The middle three are at the top, looking into the crater. The only thing I wish they had was like a “viewing platform for the height impaired” or something but there was so much to see anyways I didn’t mind! And the last picture is of our walk back to the bus. I tried to get a picture of the dikes on the adjacent mountain because where we were walking was right in the middle of the old caldera! I’m not sure if you can zoom, but if you can, do it!!
Another Thing I noticed about this area is that it kind of reminds me of Hawaii! There are a lot of basaltic looking flows, and some even look like ropy pahoehoe flows. I guess because the climate is similar, there are similar looking plants and ferns that populate the flows. It’s really beautiful. Unfortunately I was too busy falling asleep or trying to watch where the bus was going so I wouldn’t get car sick!
That’s all I have for now! We just checked out of our hotel and are about to head to the train station to head to Rome! I hope I can get some cool pictures or videos while we are on the train. I’ve never been on a train before so this will be a new experience!!
A hui hou! Ciao!
Aloha,
Diamond
Diamond Tachera's Research 