Sailing Adventures of Jay Sea Dee IP485-15: Road Trip…Pompei

Just to change it up a bit I had reserved a car (a Lancia Musa) and a hotel room so we could get out of Rome for a few days. Our first stop was Naples. This was just a pizza lunch stop since Naples was where pizza was invented. It was market day…or maybe every day is market day…and it was crazy with stalls selling just about anything you could think of. Parking was a bit of an ordeal but we managed and we also managed to find a great little pizzeria for lunch. After lunch John searched some of the nearest stalls and found some real treasures…John treasures…like a digital micrometer and a current probe…oh boy!!!! The girls and I were a bit disappointed as everyone was already closing up shop for siesta time. Jonathon was approached by a man selling an IPad for only $100 Euro. He really wanted it but I ran away with the money so he was out of luck…sorry Bud. Off to Pompei:

With Mt. Vesuvius looming in the background, we stepped into the large market-place staring down the street in awe. You tend to let your mind wander to that day…August 24, A.D. 79 when Mt. Vesuvius blew its top and buried Pompeii and the 2,000 residents that chose to stay after the ash cloud gave its warning. I had never thought about it before but the bodies you see are actually plaster casts. The archaeologists found spaces as they dug with bones in them and realized this was where a person had died and so they poured plaster in them to re-enact the burial pose. Viewing these was one of our favorite parts of Pompeii.

We saw a bathhouse, a brothel with erotic frescoes and beds of stone, the House of the Faun, the Fast Food area and a mill/bakery. We viewed much, much more and there are actually a lot of very well restored areas.