Mom and I woke up bright and early just because that’s what we normally do. But we weren’t checking out of our room until about 10. We needed to be in Pompeii in at 3 o’clock, and it was about a two hour and 40 minute drive. We had enough time to walk across the street to the local pub and get breakfast croissants. Then we finished packing up our things, and we found the vice president debate on YouTube so we watched that before leaving.

The drive through Rome wasn’t too bad. Yes they are aggressive drivers but I’m sorry the Amalfi Coast drivers are much worse than Roman drivers. Even with a gazillion vespers are out the city, I was more afraid of hitting a motorcycle and a pedestrian versus a car. When we pulled up Pompeii on the Google maps to see how long it was gonna take us it said five hours. I’ve done the research and there was no way it was gonna take us five hours. Fortunately, we found a button on my iPhone had been pushed, and it was taking us the no toll route. I think it ended up taking about three hours, with a couple of wrong turns, some sketchy looking areas and along the way.

Pompeii was delightful and amazing to see. We were glad it was overcast and didn’t rain. We had a wonderful guide and a lovely group of people on our tour, all Americans. He started The tour talking about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. 2/3 of the mountain was blown off, people died in different ways.

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius happened in two major phases. During the first, the volcano vomited hot gas, ash, and pulverized pumice, which caved in roofs in Pompeii and toppled trees. Although some inhabitants of the city were crushed during this phase, many others were able to escape. Next came a series of “pyroclastic surges,” during which turbulent masses of hot ash and lava obliterated any remaining people and structures. 

The photos below represented where the gladiator Ives. Small rooms where 3 men lived. 50 rooms times 3 men in each, so many.

Our tour guide Lelo was an architect. He was funny, entertaining, patient and creative with our needs. He knew so much about Pompeii it was quite impressive.

Here are some of the fun facts we learned:

• Lelo describe the city like Las Vegas, pop culture for its time and sin city.They had amphitheaters for music, drama, and dance. It would stretch across the roof. There were brothels and prostitutes. The prostitutes had paintings on the walls depicting the different sex options available.
• There were plenty of bodies discovered underneath all of the ash and pumice left behind by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Many of these had left holes within the ash layers after disintegrating, as noticed by Italian architect Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863. He came up with the idea of injecting plaster into these gaps, thus creating plaster casts of the bodies of the people buried at Pompeii. This has been helpful to researchers and other architects ever since as they endeavor to understand more about what happened during this immense tragedy.
• In 1997, Pompeii became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is an incredibly important place in that it provides such a complete example of Roman life, architecture, community and history. So much has been learned from the excavations at Pompeii, in terms of history, science and sociology.
• Plenty of bodies were discovered underneath all of the ash and pumice left behind by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Many of these had left holes within the ash layers after disintegrating, as noticed by Italian architect Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863. He came up with the idea of injecting plaster into these gaps, thus creating plaster casts of the bodies of the people buried at Pompeii. This has been helpful to researchers and other architects ever since as they endeavor to understand more about what happened during this immense tragedy.
• Researchers believe that before Pompeii was a Roman town, it was ruled and inhabited by – the ancient Greeks. They can’t be sure on the exact dates, but there are fragments of a Greek Doric Temple in Pompeii. This temple dates back to the 6th century BC – and you can get up close to it on a day trip from Rome.
• As simple as it seems, the reason that so many people died – and an entire city was buried for hundreds of years – when Vesuvius erupted was because the wind was blowing in a northwesterly direction. Typically, research suggests, the wind would have been blowing from the southwest instead. That would have meant that the debris was blown away from the city, instead of covering it as it did. It is incredible to think that such a small factor actually caused so much death and destruction, leaving behind a well-preserved Roman city.

After Pompeii, we drove to Pimonte. We’re only staying there one night and we chose this place because it was only 30 minutes from Pompeii. We need to wake up early, check out, and head to our cooking class in Sorrento. It took us 2,5 hours to get here. We made so many wrong turns, I tried texting the owner to let him know we were going to be running late, and we make another wrong turn and another. We ended up on incredibly narrow, steep roads of course it was now dark outside. We looked at the pictures he sent us, thought we figured it out but clearly we had not. I was starting to get very tired. So we pulled up to a hotel and Mom was going to see if they had rooms but she mentioned to a waiter that we were trying to get to Buona Stella. He called the owner who met us there in 5 minutes on his motorcycle. Then he proceeded to yell at me for not looking at his photos. As we followed him, the first two turns were familiar but the next ones were not. But we eventually made it there. We were both hungry and tired, but tired won, ad we fella sleep with our clothes and lights on. In many ways I was so impressed with myself for not dinging the shit out of this car between the narrow roads and closeness to other cars, etc.

Tomorrow Sorrento…it’s only 45 min away, hopefully.