Pompeii

May 17, 2009

We woke up around 6, got ready and left the hostel.  As soon as we got out on the street we started getting lots of honks as usual.  So my theory is that since Hillary is so tall and blond and white that everyone notices her and therefore we ALWAYS get honked at and catcalled.  I was like, “THAT’S IT!  As soon as we get back to Siena you are dyeing your hair and chopping it short.”  I also threatened to cut it off in the middle of the night while she slept.  She tries to retaliate saying that its not her, it’s me.  But I just tell her its all her fault.  We caught the circumvesuviana train and headed to Pompeii!  It was so cool because on the ride there we could see the volcano (mt. Vesuvius).  It’s just this random big mountain that the whole city of Naples is built around.  There are some other mountains around but they are farther away so it makes the volcano look really cool.  Since it was a Sunday the train was on a different schedule and it dropped us off a little further than we expected.  Again we were like, “Something tells me we took the long way, oh yeah, its my feet.”  We were one of the first people to get to the ruins.  First we explored the forum and the main street.  Then we decided we should invest in some of the audio guides so that we could know more about what we were looking at.  We made our way there which again took forever to got the audio guides.  The whole experience was SO interesting because Pompeii was buried by ash from the volcano in 79 AD.  You could see the walls of the buildings and a lot of frescoes were still there too.  You could also see the tessera (tile type) flooring in some of the big houses.  There were fountains with showed designs that were used at that time.  Another cool thing were the plaster figures of people.  When they were digging they found some crevasses with pieces of bone so someone had the bright idea to fill the crevasse with plaster.  When the people were buried by ash they suffocated and after their bodies decomposed the ash kept the shape of their body.  When they filled the crevasses with plaster they were able to see the shapes of their bodies and even the expressions on their faces.  It was really sad to see these.  Some of them had remains of bones and teeth.  Pompeii took us the whole morning and part of the afternoon.  Afterwards we could hardly walk but we got back on the train and went over to Herculanium.  Herculanium was anoter city hit by the volcano but it was buried by lava instead of ash.  Herculanium is on the other opposite side of the volcano from where Pompeii was so it was actually right under the city of Naples.  It was discovered when some one was trying to build a well in their back yard and ran into one of the city walls.  The actual ruins are a lot smaller than Pompeii.  On one end of the city is the ocean and the beach and on the other there are houses.  You can where the building goes right under the houses and I guess they couldn’t get permission to tear up any more of the city.  I think there is still a lot under there.  We didn’t actually go in to see it because Hillary and I didn’t want to pay again so we just looked at it from above. 

After Herculanium we got back on the train, which took us to the main train station in Naples.  From there we bought our tickets to get back to Siena.  Since it was Sunday the trains didn’t run as often so we had to wait a long time.  The train ride was FOREVER!!  It was late getting into Chiusi where we were supposed to catch our train going to Siena.  Since it was late we missed our connection and had to wait another hour and a half after which we found out that the train had been cancelled.  While we were waiting we got hungry so we got a bunch of junk food at the train station and made a friend.  His name was Valerio and he’s a law student in Naples.  Also while we were waiting a couple of carabinieri (police) came up to us and asked to see our documents.  They were surprised when I spoke Italian and tried to get after us for not actually carrying our passports.  I told him that we didn’t because things get stolen a lot.  He tried to tell us that it’s people’s (and tourists) own faults if their things get stolen because they’re not careful enough.  I was like duh, that’s why we don’t carry our passports because we are being careful.  I think they were surprised that I was able to follow the argument and they weren’t really able to respond.  Since our train had been canceled they put us on a bus and drove us to Siena.  There were a lot of other people on the bus as well who were all trying to get to Siena.  I got so car sick on this ride and my butt hurt because we had been traveling all we hadn’t showered for like three days…so we were pretty miserable.  We called Rita when we got to Siena (like at 11:00) and she came and got us because it was too late to ride our bikes home.  Rita gave us some fruit salad before bed and we had our showers…ahhh.