Pompeii

We decided early on that we would see the ruins of Pompeii. I'm a History major so I've always been interested in seeing the ruins. I also really like learning about classical history. I could've swore this was going to be a good day. A good day was sorely needed. There wasn't any Wi-Fi for us at the house my mom rented, the TV did not work, the pool was dirty and cold, the stove didn't work and the house was in the middle of something like a ghost town. It was crazy and spooky. The beach was right by the house but the beach was disgusting. There was trash and debris all over the beach and it was deserted. The water looked disgusting and I instantly regretted ever thinking that this house would be nice. Also the car that we rented was much to small to fit all of us and it really couldn't fit all of us and our luggage. That meant that we would pile in the car and then someone would pile the luggage on top of us. It was pretty much torture.

Although today could not be messed up. We were going to Pompeii! Like seriously how do you mess up Pompeii? So we typed into our GPS (the one on the car, which was actually an Audi and very nice, just a little small) and we were off.

The first place we wanted to go to was Pompeii. We ended up in some town in what was considered the town of Pompeii. It turns out there is a modern Pompeii in Italy now that is actually pretty close to the original Pompeii. Its a small town and I don't recommend you take a visit because there is very little for you to actually see. So we decided we would go to Mount Vesuvius first after all. It turns out Mount Vesuvius is really easy to find just really hard to find how to get to the top of it. So we kind of drove around for a little bit and we were completely lost. My grandfather had been to Vesuvius before but he couldn't find us a way to get back up there but he did tell us how neat the top of it was,. It was just enough to make me want to see it, only to have it robbed from me because we couldn't find out how to get there. So it was back to Pompeii.

I don't know if any of you guys remember from an early post but now that my parents are here and have rented a car, I had been nominated to be the navigator in the front seat. I know you are probably like "there's a GPS! that's got to be a simple job!" I have one answer: FALSE! There was a ton of pressure because no one likes to be lost in a country where none of us are fluent in the language. So there's a lot of pressure, plus the GPS was kind of hard to understand and didn't always take us to the right place. Plus, I have some very opinionated people in the car that seem to always know when we are going and I am always confused. So it was a bad combination. But luckily I was able to help us get us there.

We had to pay a little bit but we got into Pompeii and got a little guide book. Some of the stuff was pretty cool. You can see the intricate designs on the perfect columns below:

 

These were some cool buildings and I found a lot of them to be very interesting and it really reminded me of Rome which surprisingly has a lot of Roman Ruins (that was sarcasm):

We got to explore some old Villas that were left and we got to see some really cool frescos. it was amazing to think that the things were seeing had been frozen in time for thousands of years:

The views were great and I could just imagine the people living there back in that time going through their daily lives and then their lives were lost as they were frozen in stone and ash. Most of the artifacts were taken out of Pompeii and taken to the museum in Naples where they are today. Pompeii was pretty cool and we saw some great things. If you go I recommend seeing the giant arena and the other large sites there. Pompeii was probably the highlight of the time I was in the South.