Day 10: Pompeii & Sorrento

Naples, Italy

We woke up early today to catch the high speed train from Rome to Naples…here’s a picture of the high speed train (it even looks sportier/faster than a normal one, huh?). We’re enjoying our rides on these trains and within an hour we arrived in Naples! Naples was very crowded with a lot of traffic. It’s a much larger city than I ever realized. Our driver, Claudio, quickly navigated the streets and we were on our way to Pompeii. It was a short 20 minute drive across the curving highway, and fun to take in the scenes of this colorful city with all their clothes lines hanging across the buildings (we’ve seen this everywhere, but seemed like longer clothes lines in Naples). The area outside the entrance of Pompeii felt very touristy (think immediately near Niagara Falls), so I started to worry about what the experience here may bring. Our very kind tour guide, George, eased my worries in no time at all as he started to share the history of Pompeii with us. Another extremely knowledgeable guide that taught us so much about these ruins in about a two hour tour. He wasn’t kidding when he said you could use about five days to really see it all in detail! As we explored this town, I quickly saw what he meant as every piece held its own story! The city of Pompeii was destroyed and buried under 13 to 20 ft of ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The city was ~ 170 acres and about 30% remains covered. These ruins weren’t discovered until 1748 (18th century/over 2,000 years ago), but what they taught us about another advanced society is truly eye opening! Across the vast 170 acres you can see their linear street system that was well thought out with slopes, fountains and water drains to clean the streets routinely (thought to be daily). The streets have deep grooves showing us where carriages where pulled by donkeys (exactly 1.445 meters apart; George had Bryan stand beside him to show how this width made sense for two donkeys), deeper streets than side walks (for when rain or street cleaning covered the roads) with elevated stepping stones throughout to cross streets when the high water was present. There were fountains with different gods on them at many street corners and that’s how it’s believed they would share directions/identify meeting spots (I live by the fountain of mercury) since street names did not seem to exist. They had running water in homes due to their complex aqueduct system (thanks to Archimedes), a gymnasium, paintings on the buildings show repeated patterns that imply the use of stencils, and it’s even been identified that there was an individual assigned to take a census. Before going too far into this town, we stepped into an “amphitheater” that resembled the coliseum we had just seen in Rome. Go figure, it was just that designed nearly 100 years prior (80BC)! Here there were three levels of seating where the social classes sat accordingly (slaves did not enter), first section was where the wealthy men sat, the next section for merchants (men only) and the upper ring was dedicated for women and children (but the entered from the top entrances vs the main entrance used by the men. Executions and gladiator fights would occur here too – when a participant was wounded, their fate was up to the cheering crowd on if they should be swiftly killed with no suffering (sword directly through the shoulder blade to the heart) or should be slit in the jugular for a slower death. George used Jeff as our “gladiator” to demonstrate these two options (he made our tour very interactive) Our tour guide clapped loud to show off the acoustics which loudly carried/echoed. Apparently, Pink Floyd actually filmed a concert here in 1971! The town was ruled by two men together for a year at a time. You can see various “political commercials” for candidates throughout the town. I’m amazed by the colorful marble and painted walls that have been uncovered… We learned that when there is a lot of the color blue/teal that symbolized wealth because of the materials needed to create this color. It was neat to learn how easy it was to spot if a structure was the home of a wealthy person, merchant or slave or one of the 95 merchant stores found in the town. You could tell the stores from the set up of counters and kitchens, plus the channel across the dwelling’s opening where a large door could cover the storefront. Slaves quarters were typically on the upper level (built out of wood, so they felt it was best to keep Slaves above if there were ever a fire) to help guard the wealthy with a window facing the street. Wealthy homes had a vestibule (stemming from Latin vestibulum “forecourt, entrance”). They then typically had an open air atrium with red ceramic drains to direct all water to the center. We learned bathrooms were typically small rooms directly off the kitchen, so the smell of cooking could help mask the smell of bodily fluids until they were used (urine to clean clothes due to the high amounts of ammonia) or emptied into the street for the nightly street cleaning. Homes typically had a summer and winter living section. Since this was a male dominated time, women had very little they could do if they were not happy in their situation…still on the grounds of Pompeii today you can find the poisonous flowers of oleander. Women could easily poison their husbands this way to cause what appeared to be a natural death (this is when our tour guide suggested reading books on Roman history/mythology vs any TV shows/”soap operas!”), but the poison does not have the same reaction on women. There’s also pepper trees, and a vineyard on site that can produce the same wine (strong wine at about 15%) found at that time (although they watered down their wine and added herbs/spices). Because of the rarity and limited supply this wine is sold for ~240€! We entered into one home of an owner that loved theater (they had two paintings that showed drama and comedy featured in them). On the other wall was an older man sitting in the chair with a younger man standing. The interesting thing about this painting is 1) the detail (like we saw in all artwork at Pompeii), 2) the older man’s chair is dimensional (we previously thought this technique was not learned until the Renaissance) and 3) The shadow of the table legs in the picture were even painted (again, something most thought was not known/learned about by other humans until much later). Here we learned of a table found in a houses here that was transported from Rome (was originally owned by the third man to assist in the death of Julius Cesar), and that they had a system in place for delivery that was like the pony express for quick transport. (Amazing we couldn’t figure this & running water out in America until so much later). Also, all style of homes had some type of temple typically representing their oldest family member. …this brings us to our next topic, there are phallic symbols everywhere throughout this town! Our tour guide started to tell us about how the Romans were very superstitious and used symbols to warrant off evil spirits. He asked me to trust him to lead me to one with my eyes closed. I was soon feeling a brick wall and he asked I describe the shape I felt out loud…much to my surprise I was feeling a giant stone penis while my family stood back and laughed 🙂 Our tour guide also pointed out a temple containing a phallic drawing in the middle where women would go to pray for fertility; as, men would get ride of them if they could not produce children. Families were large as many children died young, and the total town had ~ 20,000 people. We then toured the bath house which was used mainly for men, women could only use the steam room (said the cold bath water would ruin their beautiful soft skin) at another time of day. I’m again amazed at how advance the bath house was…a beautiful, intricate ceiling (I always thought everything was plain white marble or stone in early Rome, but we’ve learned these stones or plaster were painted. In Pompeii we’ve seen more of this in person than anywhere else because of how the city was preserved). The first room was a sauna, followed by the locker room with individual lockers made from marble! From here, we proceeded into the steam room where you could see remains of the curved shoots running up the wall to distribute the steam. This allowed the skin to open and breath and was followed by a cold bath to close up the pours. Men sat and discussed politics, etc here. Romans believed by keeping your body fit, it would also keep your mind fit. The word Spa steams from “spargere” = health by water. On the grounds we saw the plaster set outlines of the bodies that had been uncover…sad, yet amazing how these bodies were frozen in time. You can see the detail in bone structure in children easier because of their more dense calcium levels. We could even see the branding on a slave’s belt that marked the name of their owner. One of the most popular sites in Pompeii was, and still is it’s brothel. Not a place we ever expected to end up as a family 🙂 At its time, it’s believed the city had 26 of them! As we ventured to the main acropolis where sailers & other out of town visitors entered the town from (the bay), our tour guide pointed out various phallic shapes built into the road pointing in the direction of the brothel. Once they arrived they could view various drawings like a menu to pick their service(s). The main acropolis (market place/gathering place and justice center) was huge…expected to hold up to ~12,000 people. You can imagine how beautiful it was when it was marble lined and painted. After our tour we headed to our hotel for the next few days in Sorrento (Grand Hotel Capodimonte) – enjoyed the view, lunch and pool! We have a great view of Mount Vesuvius from across the Bay of Naples. It’s a very classy hotel and the level of service is outstanding! The housekeeping team already refreshed our towels right before dinner, and the waitstaff is charming (this has been the norm across Italy vs the poor service we get in the US and people then expect a certain % tip instead of earning it). We were all ready to relax after our warm morning in Pompeii and look forward to our relaxing tail of the trip! Had another great meal (all had to try some fresh seafood) and enjoyed strolling through this costal town. Bryan & Jeff loved their fresh jumbo scampi (see pic)! On a side note, the guys were thrilled to get access to an iron today! We found the iron at our apartment in Florence, but didn’t find the ironing board until the last day (so they basically used the iron like a steamer while we were up north). In Rome, we were told the hotel had a policy against irons, so they were not available and shirts must be ordered to be pressed (but, service wasn’t offered Fri-Sun). Today, we asked the front desk and the guy politely explained they’d help us out…normally they require you order the service because if you were to hurt yourself ironing they have to take on the liability. After laughing about it with the front desk staff he kindly told us to call from our room and they’d bring it up! Bryan and Jeff were never so excited to see an iron & ironing board and did all their ironing before dinner. Tomorrow we’ll relax and have a chance to take in the Almalfi Coast! Ciao! Disclaimer: between staying up late/getting up early to write, too much wine/food and writing while in vehicles/trains my apologies for any typos/misspelled or misused words!