Europe Day 18 of 59, Sorrento / Pompeii

The great thing about cruises is falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. What more could you ask for? It takes the travel out of travelling. If I could go to bed in my Los Angeles home and wake up in a New York hotel... that's what this cruise has been like.

We woke up in Sorrento, early. Why? We had signed up for an excusrion to Pompeii.

The view of Sorrento at breakfast. As I prepared to post this day's pics, the first pass had me including 70. Ridiculous. It would take forever to download, let alone how long it would take me to upload. I narrowed it down to 40 or so. This was not easy. One thing about this process is that I removed non-essential pics like the ones from the bus on the way from Sorrento to Pompeii. After all, Pompeii is a little more interesting than the ride to it.

This is Pompeii's gladiator training area. No matter how many times you see them, a long row of Roman columns makes you reach for a camera. Or, in my case, an iPhone.

I like this one.

Our guide was very good. But he was a tad slow paced. As he was explaining this theater to us, going so far as to explain that this is a "theater" and two theaters facing each other is an "amphitheater," Barbie and Sean the bartender (I love that at each port a crew member or two gets a few hours for an excusrion with the guests) wanted to move forward. I had a map of the site, and as interesting as I found the extra facts that the guide had to share, there was no denying that it would be more fun to head straight to the brothel we'd heard so much about from Ian. We split away from the tour, pulled out our earpieces, and began exploring.

A Pompeii street. No time for finger pics when rushing around a site of archaeological significance, but I see now that a finger suggesting, "That way to the brothel," would have been mighty cool.

I despise stereotyping, but when we got to the brothel we had to wait for a large group of Asian tourists to make their way through. Now, we were clearly perverted Caucasians who were there for the same reason as the asian tourists. But knowing what I know about Japanese tentacle monsters, I had an urge to point through this doorway and ask, over and over, "Hentai? Hentai?" I'd ask those who do not know about Hentai to refrain from googling it. Forever. You don't want to know.

As Ian explained to us the night before, Pompeii was a very international port and business center. Men from many cultures speaking many different languages were coming through looking for services of a personal nature. In other words, restaurants were not the first to use pictures on the menu. Inside this building, above small rooms with stone beds, one saw the following frescoes:

Menu Item 1

Menu Item 2

Menu Item 3

Menu Item 4

Menu Item 5

Stone bed, but clearly there would have been layers of soft material above it. Or Menu Item 3 would have been impossible on the knees.

For more, including a picture of the services provided for women, look up Lupanare or Lupanar on wikipedia.

The forum of Pompeii. The modern tragedy of Pompeii, as opposed to the ancient tragedy that is the natural disaster which buried it in 79 AD, is that when the site was first discovered in 1748 all the marble and limestone was there. And it did not take long for all of that to be frozen. If they had only discovered Pompeii in an era where the site would have been guarded, it would have beena shining, white Roman relic.

Just beautiful and amazingly preserved.

This area is protected by iron bars, like a jail cell. Sticking your arms through the iron bars makes for a more intimate pic. It was in 1860 that the excavators realized that they should pour plaster into the voids that they were finding to create casts of victims' bodies. The plaster actually destroys some remains, so today voids are filled with a plastic resin that allows us to still examine the remains. Impossible to not take this picture.

And, yes, I explained that to point out that these are not pictures of corpses, or petrified corpses. These are plaster castings of the voids left by the victims at Pompeii. Less creepy, no?

The volcanic ash would have been so hot as it fell that, hopefully, there would not have been time for prolonged pain before it was over.

Surreal that this victim's casting is resting on a shelf with pottery and such. Nothing wrong with it. Just surreal.

Sean taking a pic. It was definitely extra enjoyable to spend a few hours hanging out with him instead of having him serve us drinks. Very nice guy from Durban, South Africa. We discussed the joys of biltong.

What does it mean that I often take pics of people taking pics? Chalk it up to sharing the experience and not just the subject.

Out of countless pictures of frescoes, this one makes the blog due its size and relative completeness. I haven't made a big deal about the date, but now I will. 79 AD. This city was buried in volcanic ash in 79 AD, and remained preserved from that moment. Two thousand and thirty years ago, these frescoes were frozen in time. Yeah.

This one makes it as well. You try deciding which frescoes make the blog.

Casa del Fauno. Yes, house of the faun. I am again amazed that the faun statue is basically intact 2,030 years later, with the flooring that surrounded it.

What are they looking at?

This. Books say this depicts Alexander's victory over Darius of Persia. Romans honoring the memory of Greek victories. It's both a stretch and completely accurate to say that the Greek-Roman relationship is identical to the San Francisco-Los Angeles relationship. Think that one over before you dismiss it. (Perhaps the England-USA relationship fits better?)

The bakery. Those round stones were used to crush the grain.

My inability to ignore Roman columns on display yet again. At this point we were racing along. We'd spent more than an hour moving through the ruins of Pompeii and we had to be back at the meeting point in less than half an hour. Sean wanted to see the Anfiteatro (Amphitheater), which I learned before breaking away from the guide basically means Two Theaters because they took the tradition stage/audience theater and put a second one across from it, so that you have a stage surrounded by audience. One's tempted to call this Anfiteatro a coliseum, but The Coliseum is in Rome. There's only one of those. I'm rambling. The point is that we walked as fast as we could to the opposite corner of Pompeii to see this...

It was worth it.

The view as you enter the tunnel to the center.

Us.

The view looking back to the tunnel where we came in.

Same view, but from the opposite tunnel. We then rushed back to the meeting place, arriving exactly ten minutes late. We then heard that the group of 13 whom we'd split from had finished ten minutes early. Que sera sera. Wasn't on purpose. Hollins told us that he wasn't going to let them leave without us. (Some people prove their friendship without effort.) Ten minutes late? In Italy? Alert the media.

A view of Mt. Vesuvius from the bus.

This pic was taken for one reason. Our "mega yacht" on the left; a standard cruise ship on the right. I finally got the perspective shot I wanted.

Sorrento is basically a normal, small Italian city that happens to sit above a cliff that faces the sea. I had to share this, the view from the city of the sea. Do you know how hard it is to type "sea" instead of "ocean" when my entire has been spent next to an ocean?

A sea of scooters and a hotel at the top of the cliff. The dock is just to the left, which is where we're headed. After racing all over Pompeii, we needed some pool time.

When you see an Italian woman asleep in this position in her truck that is also a small market on wheels, well, you take a picture and share it.

The tender, waiting to take us back to the ship and the cool water of the pool. (Barbie does a great Price Is Right pose, no?)

Back by the pool. One word. Ahhh.

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