Mediterranean 2, Naples: Pompeii and Herculaneum

On June 11, 2017, Linette and I boarded the Norwegian Cruise Lines ship "Epic".

It was the first time we had done a cruise with just the two of us, and we were looking forward to it.

We got right to work trying out the food.

And I was pleased to discover a hand-scooped ice cream bar.

I also discovered a Crepe station, so life was good.

On our first night, we got to sit by the window for dinner and watch the sun set.

On Monday, June 12th, I celebrated my 50th birthday, which is best done somewhere far away. Linette spent much of the day laying out to get a tan. She might have overdone it.

I went to a magic show by Christian Miro, and the guy was funny and good. He did a great card trick, and then did a ventriloquist act using four volunteers as human dummies, which was hilarious, since the voices didn't match the people (a teenage girl got a low gruff voice with a Spanish accent, for example).

Linette and I took turns getting "Flushed down the toilet," as I called it. You ride a tube down a water slide and into a bowl that eventually dumps you down a hole.

And all that relaxation can make you tired, so we also got in a great nap.

That night we ate a nice dinner accompanied by a pleasant jazz band. The waiters also came and sang Happy Birthday to me. Their singing was horrible, but it was a nice gesture. And they gave me a piece of birthday cake. ("Just what we need," I commented, "...more food!")

Later we passed some time playing "Hand & Foot", in which Linette kicked my rear.

Then at 9:30 p.m. we went to Cirque Dreams Epicuran, a show where people did all kinds of impossible balancing acts. But first, much to our surprise and chagrin, they served us a fancy dinner of filet mignon and shrimp. We were already full from eating, so this seemed like a disaster. However, we found a way to pack most of it in.

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The two ladies at our table were from England, so when as we all told our names, I introduced myself as “Randall.” (“Randy” means “frisky” or “horny” in England). Linette caught that immediately and thought that was funny.

But enough of this silliness. On to destruction and doom....!

Pompeii

On Tuesday, June 13, 2017, we docked in Naples (Napoli) and we planned to take the train to Pompeii, but ended up hiring a van to take us to both Pompeii and Herculaneum for 30€.

At Pompeii we looked at the ruins that have been excavated over the last 150 years. Pompeii was buried in ash when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D. The city mostly vanished from memory until it was briefly discovered in the 1500s and then rediscovered in the 1700s, when excavation began.

The streets have big stepping stones so your feet don’t get wet when water is flowing down the street. But there are gaps so the carts can get through.

We thought we had a Rick Steve's audio guide to tell us what to see, but it turned out it was just a radio show that talked about Pompeii but didn't guide us through it. So then we had to scramble to figure out where the most interesting parts were, since Pompeii is huge (originally 11,000 people) and you couldn't possibly see it all in 2-3 hours.

I think we did ok, though. There were some cool buildings you could go inside of.



The ash preserved the artwork in many of the buildings for these 2000 years.

During excavation, people kept finding these pockets of air with human bones in them. Eventually they tried injecting plaster into the gaps, and it turned out that they formed the shape of the position a person was in when they were buried in ash. This left a gap when their body later decayed. Woah.

Most of Pompeii consists of ruined walls of homes, with perhaps an oven or something.

Archeology is still going on there. These appeared to be American students.

The “Forum” was the center of town where everyone gathered and chilled and stuff.

These shelves contained pottery found throughout the site. Many of the most interesting artifacts are housed at the archeological museum in Naples (which is closed on Tuesdays, it turns out).

Here’s another plaster form of a little kid who got caught in the ash. :(

We didn’t have time to learn what all these cool rooms were, but they were cool!

Here are some buff dudes holding up the ceiling in one of several bath houses.

Some places had these counters with holes in them where people sold food and stuff. Basically ancient Roman taco stands.

A bunch of the floors had mosaics that were cool. We should do that more.

There were places where you could still read the Latin writing. And my “still read”, I mean, we’re using the same alphabet as those dudes from 2000 years ago, which is awesome.

Necroplis of the Herculaneum Gate

I loved the frescoes painted in The House of the Small Fountain. It was apparently painted just a few years before the eruption.

It was seriously toasty that day, and most of Pompeii has no shade, so I was all like, “I pretty much know how those people felt.”

At noon we had to rush to meet the van that was picking us up. I'm sure there was much more to see, but we saw a good amount, and it was hot enough that we didn't mind moving on.

Herculaneum

Our next stop was Herculaneum (Erculeo), which was covered in ash on the same day as Pompeii. It is a much smaller site than Pompeii, so you can see the whole thing in two hours, and it is where the rich people lived, so there tends to be a higher concentration of artwork and other things of interest.

Below you can see an overview of the site. As you can see, there are modern houses right up to the edge of the site. In fact, some of Herculaneum is under those houses and hasn't been excavated. Sometimes you have to let the living take some priority over the dead.

When we were there, I didn't understand what the moat was, down at the bottom. I later came to find out that that is where the sea shore used to be, and those rooms at the bottom are boat house rooms.

There were cool mosaics on some of the floors.

Their streets also had stepping stones to cross without stepping in the open drainage.

We discovered a tunnel to one side of the site.

The boat houses at the ancient sea shore contained the bones of many victims of the eruption. They may have been hiding out in the boat houses to escape the falling ash, waiting to be rescued by sea, when the 570ºF (or up to 900ºF) pyroclastic surge hit them at 100 miles per hour. Bummer.

The earliest mention of Pompeii was from a letter someone wrote about their uncle, who sailed to try to rescue people and then found they couldn't set sail because of the winds associated with the eruption. Some people escaped Herculaneum by land. These people were unable to escape by sea.

Back in Naples, Linette and I decided to visit the Castel Nuovo ("New Castle"), which was first built in 1279.

I especially liked the room inside where you could walk on the glass floor and see down into the ruins and skeletons that were discovered there.

And here is a video of walking around on the floor.

There was a little bit of art in the castle, but not much. I did like this bust of Jesus, though.

Here you can see our ship in the distance from the balcony of the castle.

As we sailed away from Naples, Vesuvius towered over the metropolis, and I thought "Oh, Vesuvius, just look what you did!" I also thought how precarious it was for so many people to live right at its base. (It is said to be the most dangerous volcano in the world, due to its continued activity and the 3 million people who live within its blast zone).

It was nice to swim and relax a bit that evening.

I can't say that the day was pleasant, because of how hot it was, but we saw a lot of interesting things, and my brother said how grateful he was that he got to see my pictures of them from an air conditioned room. :)

Next up, the Etruscan tombs of Tarquinia.