Friday morning we woke up to a glorious day. Sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Off we go to find our meeting point for the tour. OMG! The Piazza I put in was right where we needed to be. Below is it. Whoopee! We all met and there were 6 of us, a lady and her daughter from Louisiana and a couple from Canada,Perfect! There were huge tour buses with all of their people piling out into the piazza.
This is Francesca, our guide. She is with a group called Italywalks. We have used this group before and the guides have been wonderful. We highly recommend them. Here she is showing some of the plaster remaining on one of the columns. Everything in Pompeii was covered in plaster(stucco) and painted in bright vivid colors.
Below are statues in the small amphitheater. The top is one of Zues and below the little bit of an eagle remains
The streets are made of the huge cobbles. The raised stones are truly stepping stones. Between them you can see deep ruts where the cart wheels rolled through. Now the yucky part of this is the stones were there so people could walk across the street because this is where all the waste was thrown.
I guess they prayed for rain a lot.
Below is the remains of a bakery. One of the ovens to the left and a mill stone to the right. All of these places had second floors. The holes along the back wall are where the support beams had been.
Everyone I have talked to has seen the photo of the dog and several people unearthed from the remains. Their bodies were covered in ash. These are plaster mopeds that were made. They purred it into the shell of the ash because the bodies decomposed leavening basically a shell.
All the pottery and artifacts are what have been found. They have moved a lot to the museum in Naples for fear that the next eruption will destroy what you see here. Also they have not dug up all that remains. Mike, the Canadian went to take a photo of the guy below, I was beside him and a lady came between us and bumped his elbow. His phone went flying into the fenced area. Francesca was resoursefu and eventually found a broom and a dustpan and retrieved the phone.
After the tour we said our goodbyes. We got together with Mike and Karen, the Canadians and had lunch. Where we parked if you ate ther you got to park free. No brainer. They talked of going up to Vesuvius. Since we had the car, we decided what the heck. Off we go. What Ana adventure. We followed signs and started up this very steep road that turned into what looked like a cobbled foot path. Well the little Fiat we had eventually decided not to go any further. Somehow Jim turned that puppy around and down we went. We stopped a asked an older gentleman which way. With a smile he pointed to where we needed to go. He probably spent his day watching people try to go up that way. Jim and I have seen many a steep climb. The road to Vesuvius was amazing, we finally got to a point and realized it would be another hour and a half to get to the top. We all opted to go to the museum. This sounds like a short trip. There are no straight roads in Napoli or Pompeii. We did get there. After the museum we dropped Mike and Karen off at the train station so they could get back to Rome. We made our way back near our hotel to a beautiful Resturant called Bikini. After a great meal
We got back to the hotel this was a full day 7:00 in the morning to 10:30 at night,what a fun day!
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