Today we headed north from Calabria up to Pompeii then on to sorento. We packed, said good bye to the neighbors, four legged, two legged and winged., fed them some of our leftovers closed up the airbnb and  were ready to go when Luigi cane by at 8 to pick us up 

This has been a really nice place to stay..   Really homey

We piled in the van and headed north

 

The contryside  we drove through was really beutiful.. very green and mountainous.. It got busier the further north we got. By the time we hit Salerno it was like one bug city. We pulled off the highway and headed in to. the Pompeii site. It was a zoo as one might expect.. super crowded.. bt from what we understand it was nothing like the peak crowds of summer. It was a very fun place to just do people watching.> tHere were som many languages being spoken.. I think English was the most common… but we heard italian  (obviously) , german, french, hebrew, hindii.. etc.. kinda cool

 

We met our guide Paulo.. He was Italian… but also a native english speaker. His mom is from England.. He gave that away when he used the term ‘cats eyes’ to describe some  reflective white stones embedded in the ancient cobbled streets to guid people to the market. Paulo was a great guide. In addition to facts, he gave us context.. and asked us questions to draw out our understanding.. I loved the way he explained that at the time of the eruption in AD 79 no one had  ever recorded a volcanic eruption .. The ancient Pompeians had no way to interpret the huge earthquake of AD 62 as a harbinger (never used that word before) of the eruption. Paulo told us that as many as 16000 people died as a result of the earthquake . The folks of the day viewed that the earthquake and the eruption were the rath of the gods. .. Paulo explained that when other romans arrived after the eruption they found the land where the city was apparently wiped clean.. actually it was covered with 20 feet of volcanic ash.. Pompeii had once been a port town that directly abutted the sea. The ash moved the shorlien out more than a kilometer..  When others arrived at the shorline. it was completely bare.. what were they to think other than the gods had wiped the city from the face of the earth.. 

Our tour was full of surprises like that .. Paulo knew the place well and after spending some  time in the central parts.. we took off for less touristed sections of the city which was very welcome. Paulo is also nearly 2m tall and was in several episodes of James May : Our man in Italy 

You can see him in Episode 2 here:

Note: it took some sneakiness to be able to do a screen capture from Amazon Prime.. They evidently add a black rectangle over all screens to prevent screen capture of stills or movies I did a little digging and found out that if you turn off the ‘use hardware acceleration if available’ feature in settings, then relaunch your browser you can circumvent this anti copy stuff.. bwa-ha-ha !

Anyway.. back to Pompei.  . I took way too many pictures to post everying I saw (>400 .. ) So I’ll try to share a few that really stuck me. 

I took a bunch of pictures of this statue before Palo told me it was a piece made for a recent contembeperary art exhibit.. Still I liked it

 

Here’s the central square of the city with Mt Vesuvious in the background

 

And here”s what the crown looked like through most of the center of the city

Paulo showed us the first plaster casts made of victims of the ash cloud. The ash cloud was so hot that the people died within a few breaths. The ash sealed around their bodies then set like clay around them as their bodies decayed. What was left was their bones and a hollow place where their bodies had been  . When people started unearthing the city in the 19th century they came across these hollow places  not knowing what they were. In 1860 the head archeologist at Pompei  Giuseppe Fiorelli  developed a way to fill the cavities with plaster  which made the forms and position of the victims visible. Looking at them eas fascinating.. but I also felt the deep sadness of people dying while  trying to save themselves and others. THough copies have been made, These are soem of the first casts made.. and they are original. The bones of the victims are still embedded in the plaster.  

these people were found within the market place. The frescoes of where people could find, fish, meat and vegatables were still visible on the walls. Paulo explained that as a port city, there were many poeple coming through and not all understood  latin…. so the pictures were like a menu

 

It was amazing to see the frescos  on the walls and the tile floors. They looked totally  modern.. 

 

Thehere were many of these small faces hidden in the pictures. some of them grosteque. They were thought to be there to scare off evil spirits. 

Some of them were decorative, some  were boastful.. some were vulgar.. like this one. Actually the large penis in this one is balanced against coins.. meaning the owner was rich.. probably newly rich and wanted others to know it

In that same house, the slave quarters also served a brothel.. and the frescos were like a menu .. no  translation required

We got a glimpse into what life was like in AD79 and how they made things workl. Like these lead pipes.. still intact. That must have effected their health..  though their life span was already pretty short. 

Paulo told us about some of the subtleties of archeology used to pinpoint the date , season and even time of the eruption. This is a Pizza /bread oven that was goign during the eruption. the loaf got burnt.. but it preserved the stamp of II.. out of.set that had I,II, and III. from that archeologists figured that eruption happened early afternoon (I think) during the second baking of the day. . THe flour grinding stones where near by

Paulo is tied in to the new discoveries being made at the site. He showed us soem recent forensic work that shows facial reconstruction based on the shape of the casts and the skulls they contained. It was amazing to see these creconstructed faces

 

Paulo took us out of the most vistied part of the site to  places where we were often the only folks in sight. THat also speaks to the size of this place.. its a whole city !

This one villa had only recently been opened.. it was beautiful !

We learned that the ancient romans were pretty short.. so these spaces were more diane and linda sized

 

THe mosaic and fresco work is amazing and has just been opened to the public.. 

 

There wer soem great examples of forced perspective and  Trompe-l’œil.

We also saw a reconstructed garden where archeobotantanist  (is that a word).. reconstructed the type and placement of plants based on  plaster casts of their burnt roots

 

Here’s an ancient fast food restaurant  

 

We learned abotut he construction of the roads.. they were two siedwalks where b=people walked.. and a channel; in the middle where the romans through all their sewage. and waited for rain to carrry it away.. must have been a fragrant place..   THere were ruts where wagons went and stepping stones for people to cross the channel .   And frequent aateer spouts for peopl eand animale

And like everyhere.. this good luck sign 

 

We visited two amphitheaters ,, one for music, one for plays.. and were told that the guides tease each other about trying to sign there. 

 

Then oit was time to go.. We said bye to Paulo and found luigi .. and headed off to Sorrento. 

Then on to Sorrento…

 

And thats where I need to change directions a bit.  I debated how much I should say here..  but decided to include this editorial, because I want to be honest.. 

We decided to go to Sorrento to check out the the famed beach and the legendary  Amalfi coast. If you look at them and guide books, they sound like paradise. I have to say, though  they were not for us. .. Or maybe it was that we were not for them . I’m sad to say this because I know many people love the place ..  

Our vacation to this point was in a small back country towns that were Quaint the people were friendly, and the prices were good.  The towns were friendly to tourists, but not completely about tourism.. 

Sorrento and the Amalfi coast were completely different.. While , they were physically beautiful. They were packed with so many people that it was very hard to enjoy the beauty.  every street was packed with shops  catering only to tourists . the food, though great, was very expensive.  We are devfiently small town people. 

The hilight of our days in Sorrento were the beautiful Airbnb we’d rented from Mariangela and the hiking trails we found that took us outside of the city. Indeed sorrento was much more fun and beutiful when viewed from a distance. 

OK.. that said.. here’s what we did. 

Our stay began at a nice restaurant on the beach. It had a sun deck where you could swim . The chef said he’d take care of us.. and chose food he thought we would like. The food was very  good and beautifully served .. though it turned out to be much(!)  more expensive than we expected.  

The highpoint of the meal.. even though it was a bit sad, was to saying goodbye to our driver and now good freidn Luigi. He has been such a wonderful companion for us. Not only is he an excellent driver.. but he is an excellent tour guide, our translator, our trip planner, our genological researcher , our social director , our counselor and our language coach 

((He taught me how to say:  Trentatré Trentini entrarono a Trento, tutti e trentatré, trotterellando .. which means 33 people from torento entered terento , all thirty three were trotting) 

We  had a short goodbye celibration including a short poem we wrote for him. We will never forget Luigi for his kindness  and for his skill. We hope to see him again soemtime.. you never know !

 

Luigi dropped us at our Sorrento adventure

 

It was pretty cool seeing vesuvious in the backdrop.. hope it doesn t\t blow its top druign our visit … (htats what diane is saying in this pic 🙂

 

If Pompee was the highpoint of the day.. then meetign up with my freidn Shmul and his family was the highpoint of the evening. Shmul lives in Israel and is one of my favorite peopl,e on the planet (and I’d say that even if he wasnt reading this 🙂 .. He and his lovely family have visted us here in VT>. Shul and I have met many places incluing a really great day in las vegas  which inclded and 8 mile run and a phil lesh show, he’d stayed with me and a coupel of other freinds in my moms house in massachuestes ..e ven though she was out of town.. and last year shmul and three other freidns and i rented a house in Betherl NY to see two nights of Phish shows.. Now, SHul was were in Sorrento for the holidays (between the days of the jewish new year). The fact that we overlapped was a complete coincidence. We met up at a nice tratoria they found and had a wonderful eveing catching up .. and introducing  Shmul, his wife Karen and their kids Noah, Tamar , and Aaaf to  Linda and David . It was so great catching up !

 

we walked down to the water. .then went back and slept great.. 

it had been a busy day !

nioe all, nite sam

-me