We got up early on Friday morning, had breakfast, and then walked over to the main train station a few blocks away to pick up our rental car from Sixt. Anders has driven many times in Italian traffic (they are all apparently insane), so he was confident about handling the driving part, thank goodness, as I would never have been able to manage. We had a Jeep Wrangler, and we couldn’t get the GPS to work so we had to use Anders’ phone instead. Found out later that day that we couldn’t just put “Pompeii” but that we had to have an actual street address input for it to start.
We drove 2.5 hours south just past Naples to Pompeii. Pompei with one i is the modern city that has grown up around the ruins of the ancient city, which has two ii’s. Pompeii is HUGE, very spread out, and not very well sign-posted, so a guide or audio guide is essential. It is mile after mile of city blocks of brick foundations and streets with huge, sometimes melted, paving stones. There are water fountains here and there but we forgot to bring water bottles in with us, so by mid-afternoon we were parched and ended up drinking water from a fountain from the cap of a sunscreen bottle XD
Pompeii was buried by up to 6 meters (20 feet) of molten ash and pumice from the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Even though it is not super close to the mountain, it was unfortunately right in the path of the clouds of material and gases that erupted. We could see Vesuvius in the distance… it’s still an active volcano and is continuously monitored for any signs of impending eruptions. Kind of ridiculous that the whole area is built up again by modern towns all around it. You can read all about the ruins and the eruption, and the excavations on Wikipedia if you are interested; it’s fascinating. Excavations and discoveries are still ongoing.
The first building we went into was the public baths, then we followed the main street up through the first block to a large city square. Martin and I ended up ahead of Anders and Karin and we just continued walking for block after block, peering into houses, businesses, and other bricked in spaces. Even with the audio guides we had picked up, it was often hard to tell what exactly we were seeing, and several of the better preserved homes are not open to the public every day; apparently, they rotate them, which I found annoying. We saw the little theater and the gymnasium where athletes trained, and then the three of them wanted to walk all the way to the ampitheatre on the far edge of the ruins. I opted to walk back toward the entrance and find a place to buy water, which I did. I sat and googled stuff about Pompeii while I was waiting for them, and then we met up and went to the building that houses many of the body casts of the victims, which were made during the excavations, only to find it was also closed. We did see some in the exhibition near the exit, though.
It was overcast most of the day, and not too warm, except for a few occasions when the sun came out and tried to broil us. We walked all over for about 3 hours. It rained on the drive back to Rome and there were huge standing puddles everywhere in the city, so it had apparently poured while we were gone. We actually ended up eating at McDonald’s in the train station for dinner, which was surprisingly excellent. McDonald’s in Italy has the reputation of being the best in the world. It’s our go-to road trip food and pretty much the only time we ever eat fast food, so it felt right, even if it wasn’t very Italian of us!
Martin snapping Minerva in the Temple of Apollo
Pompeii basilica
