Day 4 – Pompeii and Herculaneum

Ah, nothing quite like getting up early while on vacation. At least, if there is anything like it, I don’t like it.

We headed out to see Pompeii. We got to see a tiny slice of Naples along the way. I noticed when we were in Scotland that it looked remarkably like the Appalachian Mountains. And, clearly, that must be why the Scots were so happy to settle there. Naples looks remarkably like New Jersey. Perhaps that’s why so many Italians settled there?

Ah, along the way, we got to experience a tour bus classic. “In addition to the tour you want, we’re going to stop at this tiny shop for you to use the restroom, and hopefully buy stuff so I can get kickbacks.” In this case, it was a cameo factory, which seems to be big business around Naples. A girl at the factory gave us what was supposedly a description of how cameos are made. I totally didn’t understand a bit, because she was talking so fast.

Finally, we got to Pompeii. It was freaking fantastic. For some background, as many of you probably don’t know this, I was effectively a Classics minor in college (Davidson didn’t actually have minors, but I had enough credit hours for one if they had). I’ve studied a lot of Roman history, life and times, etc. To finally be here was wonderful. Oddly enough, it wasn’t as illuminating as, say, Tulum had been for me. I’d seen hundreds of pictures of Pompeii and similar ruins. So, I was actually recognizing bits and pieces as we went along. But, there were also so many things that just got put into the right context and scale to really click.

I’ll spare you the gritty blow-by-blow. There were lots of ruins. We learned lots of nifty facts. The plaster casts of dead people freaked me out (seriously, I could hear them screaming in my head). I felt the emotional signatures of people long dead, imprinted on these roads they had walked every day. The houses were impressive. The stores and marketplaces were intriguing. The amount of work that went into both building Pompeii and then excavating it was awe-inspiring. Sonya should have some amazing pictures.

We got suckered into buying some trinkets as we left the ruins. I got a book with a DVD that was only 10 euros. Hopefully it will be worth it. Sonya got talked into buying a necklace, because the woman selling it looked just like her grandmother. All in all, not too bad. I felt like we’d gotten fleeced, but not actually taken advantage of.

When we got back to the ship, Ray, Tina, and I decided to take the afternoon tour to Herculaneum. (For those who don’t know, Herculaneum was a resort town on the other side of Vesuvius from Pompeii, that was buried from the same eruption the next day. Check out Wikipedia for details.) Guess what? We stopped at a different cameo factory on the way. Quel surprise. However, this one was actually much nicer, and had a video that I could actually understand. So, now I know how to make cameos! (Not really.)

Herculaneum was mostly the same as Pompeii. However, because it was covered in boiling hot mud rather than fine ash and super-heated rocks, slightly different bits were preserved. Pompeii had lots of everyday items very well-preserved. Herculaneum lost much of that, but the architecture was in better shape. Which is nice, because Herculaneum was the Palm Springs of its day, and had some really impressive architecture.

I was pretty darned tired by the end of two tours. We got back to the boat, went through two totally ineffective security checkpoints, and made it to dinner. Which was actually quite nice. I think we’re getting the hang of dining here. Because it’s all on you to choose where and when, it’s quite different from other cruises. It’s also different because, if you wait until later in the evening, there’s a good chance you’ll have to wait for a table when you do get there. So far, we’ve been going early, and only hit a snag the night we got to the restaurant before it opened.

I finished writing this up while listening to the sea roll past in one ear, and Sonya snoring gently in the other ear. I think that it’s time for me to join her.

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