Adventures in Italy: Naples & Pompeii

Nate and I just got home from our first big trip in Europe and it was everything we imagined and more. We have so many pictures and stories to share, so we're going to do a separate blog for each place we visited... so check back throughout the week for more posts!
To start our journey, we flew into Naples in order to be close to Pompeii. As we rode the bus from the airport to the train station, we didn't exactly see the best parts of Naples. When we got off the bus, it was utter chaos. We couldn't even tell where the train station was... even though it dropped us off there. So, we just started walking around to look for it and some nice man told us we were walking in the wrong direction. Who knows where we could've ended up! We apologize for not having any pictures of Naples, but we didn't want to take our camera out in the part of town we were in... we thought we'd get mugged, robbed, (wait, is that the same thing?) or "kidnapped"! Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it was a little scary. We felt much better once we were on the train to Pompeii.

Pompeii
Ever since I learned about Pompeii in school, it always fascinated me. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like living there 2,000 years ago. One day, the Pompeiians were going about their everyday business and out of nowhere... boom! A huge eruption. What would you do? Run, hide, or find someone to say goodbye? They didn't even know that Mt. Vesuvius was a volcano. Imagine the shock and surprise they felt, along with a hundred other emotions.

The entire city was covered in 10 to 20 feet of volcanic ash-frozen in time-until being rediscovered in the 18th century. Archaeoligists were able to fill the holes of decomposed bodies with plaster, creating lifelike (and disturbing) casts of the people in their final moments. In the following picture, this person was curled up in a ball, either crying or just covering their face from the hot volcanic ash.

Here is another cast of someone lying face down...

They even found dogs. That is so sad...

Entering the ruins of Pompeii...

As we walked around, we came across a lot of brick ovens. Supposedly, hardly anyone cooked there back then because the homes were really small and rarely included ovens, so they would just come get food at the local bakery...

Another "fast food" area. The cooks would place pots in those holes, so I guess they would be called potholes.
This is inside a quite well-restored home... and a fancy one at that. All the fancy homes had an open area with a courtyard surrounded by pillars.

The interior of the fancy houses had a big room for bathing. Notice the mosaic tiles here... they are incredibly small and perfectly placed.
Here is a paved one-way street. I'm standing on a strategically-placed stone. When it was time to clean the streets, they would flush water through them and people could cross the road by this stepping stone. The main two-way streets had three of these stepping stones.

This next picture was in one of the Pompeiian baths. These baths are the ancient equivilant to our modern day spas... which I happen to love. I also love the little guys along the wall.

The detail is amazing.

A marble wash basin with writing around the edges...

This is a famous sculpture that was in the front entryway of someone's house. I thought it would be bigger, but it was only about a foot tall.

These pillars surround the courtyard of what was probably a gorgeous home and surprsingly, all are still standing. Nate loves this picture for some reason...
We wandered off the beaten path and we could not believe how big the city was! I imagined it much smaller. You could walk around all day and still not see every street!
The grooves in the stone are caused by the chariots wearing them down... pretty crazy, huh?

Off the beaten path a little more, we climbed through ruined walls... it was really fun!

Even though we had a horribly wet and cold first day, we were happy to see it clear up a little so we could see the mountains (and volcano) in the distance...

This is the temple in the city center. The base of the pillar, or what's left of it, was huge!
One of the amphitheatres for shows and probably some gladiator fights...
It was so fascinating walking through the ancient city of Pompeii. It has always been something I wanted to do, so now I can check it off my "bucket list." :)

One last picture and then it's off to our next destination... ROME!