Pompei trip

The trip to Pompei involved a one hour bus trip to Sorrento and then catching the Circumvesuvius train to Pompei. Both trips were sightseeing trips in their own right.

The bus trip has some incredible drops just off the side of the road. Claire refused to look. The road is so tight that on a number of occasions we had to stop and back up or slow down to a crawl in order to squeeze past a bus going the opposite way.

The train trip from Sorrento to Pompei was less spectacular but still interesting.

Giuliana & Manuela advised us to gather a group together on arrival at Pompei to share the cost of a two hour official guided tour. There were seven of us who formed a group at the cost of 15 euro each. The guide was a real character and well worth the money and kept referring to the ancient Italians as we.

Firstly Pompei is far bigger than we imagined. It covers 61 hectares and well over a couple of km’s in length. We arrived before midday and there were lots of people and especially big tour groups that our guide called the barbarians, but the place is so big that it wasn’t too bad.

The Basilica

The guides tour covered the highlights in about a quarter of the park and covered the main square and its temple and buildings, the shopping district, a remarkably intact house, plaster casts of some of the victims of the volcano, recovered crockery and household items, the bathhouses and the red light district with erotic paintings included.

Plaster cast of victim, covering his face.

Statues

All the above was impressive and the guide especially regaled us with colourful stories about his obvious favourite, the red light district. So if you were looking for some paid company in the city you could walk down one of the main street until you found a penis engraved on the flagstones at a 45 degree angle to the road. This indicates that you take the next left for a good time.

Once we departed from our guide we had lunch and then started to seek some of the other sights the guide pointed out to us earlier. These turned out to be just as spectacular.

The amphitheatre was Peter’s favourite of these. It was huge and it’s the one where Pink Floyd gave their Pompei concert. I think it could easily hold 20-30 thousand people. I was just trying to imagine when the archaeologist first found a part of this building in his excavations and thought I wonder what this is and started digging it out and several years later ending up with a gigantic amphitheatre.

Inside the Amphitheatre

Outside the Amphitheatre

There were two theatres one holding 5000 people and the smaller holding about 500. I was tempted to go down to the stage in the bigger theatre and start singing, but then I might have been the first person stoned in Pompei for two thousand years.

Large Theatre

The temple of Apollo and gardens and many, many other features followed as we spent another three hours before running out of puff.

Who knew there were bus stops in Pompei?

Statue of Apollo

One of the best preserved paintings.

The whole place certainly lived up to and exceeded our expectations.  It’s one place you shouldn’t miss if you’re in Italy.