Are you ready for picture overload?
Good. Lets begin!
Apparently we went picture happy this day. We have almost twice the amount of photos than from any other day. What can I say, Pompeii is pretty interesting.
This is what Hunter looks like if you wake him up before nine. And this was taken after about a mile of walking. haha.
We met our group for this tour at the Piazza de Popolo (square of the people). Here are a couple of the cool things surrounding it (there are more at the end of the post).
About a 3 hour bus ride away from Rome is Pompeii! It is right outside of Naples, which is right along the coast. Interesting fact: before Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD Pompeii was the major port city in southern Italy.
These are some catacombs underneath the city. To help emphasize how dramatically the landscape was changed when Vesuvius erupted, the level that those were on used to be ground level. We were a good 20 feet higher at least.
Tiny doors for tiny people.
It really is incredible how well Pompeii was preserved.
This was a fast food joint. Using terracotta bowls allowed them to keep the food warm. Interesting, eh?
The streets of Pompeii. The sidewalk is elevated because the streets used to flow with waste. Thank goodness for modern day plumbing.
Inside one of the nicer houses in the city...
...with original wall paintings preserved and all.
Obviously not the original gardens, but an idea of what it would have looked like.
The level that Pompeii was built on was not the original level. When excavating, another level was found underneath Pompeii. That is what is pictured below, with the Pompeii level having the colorful walls.
This is a crosswalk - elevated so that you can avoid the muck on the streets.
This picture doesn't capture it really well, but the level the trees are growing on is the modern day level. They had to dig pretty deep to find Pompeii.
Original painting/carvings on the room of one of the community baths.
And the lockers.
This is a cast of one of the original bodies they found. You can see the terror the people experienced when Vesuvius erupted by the positions they assumed and the facial expressions.
The floor of the men's side of the bath. The openings on the side is where the warmth would come from and heat up all the water. Pretty incredible setup.
The main city square...with Vesuvius in the background.
The view from the outskirts of town.
And the crater at the top of Mt. Vesuvius. It is about a mile hike (after a 45 minute drive on tiny, twisty, Italian roads that give you a whole new appreciation for our big, lush American ones - especially when you are traveling by bus) to the top with a 14% incline.
Another interesting fact: before the eruption that buried Pompeii, Mt. Vesuvius was 10 times as wide and twice as tall. Crazy, huh? I guess it would have to have been pretty huge to extend the coast line about a mile farther out and bury more than one whole city.
Being at the top of the mountain also afforded a nice view of the Bay of Naples.
And just a few different angles on the crater itself...
After running in my minimalist shoes for so long I didn't realize how hard it is to walk in normal shoes. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I tripped or stumbled over rocks. And I was wearing Pumas! They aren't even big at all! Apparently my sense of foot size has drastically changed. I can't imagine how bad it would have been if I was wearing normal tennis shoes.
Don't worry, the Frisbee made it to the top of Vesuvius as well.
And finally, our return to the Piazza de Popolo. The view from the outside:
The twin churches with the obelisk in the middle. This picture purposefully hides the church on the left because it was under renovation which ruins the ancient feel of things. This way you can kinda get the sense of it.
And an up close shot of the church not under renovation.
No comments:
Post a Comment