Pompeii

Yesterday we got up at 6am and by 7 were on a bleary-eyed collection of busses and trains to get to Pompei! It was perfect out, which was fortunate since it will be pouring in Rome for the next 6 days.

My excitement over the high quality of the many sandwiches we packed could only be surpassed by the eventual arrival at somewhere so immensely sad and beautiful.

At noon we made it to Pompei and there are a few things that immediately grabbed my attention:

1. There are gentle feral dogs napping all over it. 

 

(free water in ancient spigots everywhere! yeah!)

2. All the Italian teenagers we saw in Paris must have swapped spots with all the French teenagers who now swarm every public place in Italy, obliviously taking up space in giant gangly groups in major points of traffic. And testing my Quaker upbringing.

However, we spent 6 hours there and by the afternoon, many of the spaces that were locked for "restoration" were quietly opened once all school groups had left, meaning we got to be in major, eerie and the best preserved spaces completely alone.

 

Cave Canem - Beware of the Dog (at the House of the Tragic Poet)

 

Trying to look natural. 

 

Melanie & Saint Sebastian, my faves. 

 

On our way to an ancient graveyard. 

 

Good day. 

 

At the Granary.

 

Entirely alone in the largest baths. 

 

And here. 

Venus Fresco in a private residence. 

 A lot of roads and major spaces were shut, meaning moving around could get a bit frustrating and we met more than a few disappointments with other visitors, finding things we had walked half an hour to get to were closed to the public.  

The room of the Fugitives, were the majority of the victim casts are, was off limits because they weren't done dispersing some gravel on the ground.

This we did not accept, so I squiggled my way in and saw them.  I don't have any photos, though, since I left my bags with Melanie. 

Sometimes when visiting a lot of ancient spaces, surrounded by frustrating and obnoxious tourists, it becomes difficult to get time to think about everything that went on there and really imagine the realities of the past.  

With everything so well preserved and restored at Pompeii, and it being so expansive, not only did we not have to imagine, it was all right there, practically untouched compared to any other things I've seen from 2000 years ago.   

 Old row homes filled with grass, bakeries, granaries, vineyards, it's all there.   

 

Cast of a young boy.