Pompeii

** Some of the pictures at the end might disturb young viewers.  You might pre-view this one before showing the kids.  I include them because they, more than anything else, really made the impact of what a horror the eruption was for these people.  View with caution.**

This is the view from the visitor's center.  Vesuvius is to the left of the city.  The sea is more or less behind me (some ways away).  From what I remember, most of the city was built starting in 8BC, although they have evidence of habitation from much, much earlier.  Vesuvius erupted in AD 79 and caught the town by surprise.  The town was pretty instantly blasted by impossible heat and covered by about 9 feet of ash.  Those not killed by the heat and first round of ash were killed shortly thereafter when the pyroclastic flow hit the city and did it in.  The weight of that flow collapsed most of the roofs and second stories.  People and animals were either smothered or buried.  There was not time to escape.  The whole city was buried under 25 feet of volcanic ash.

This is looking down on the gladiator quarters.  Some of the room remains.  The colonade contines around on all four sides.

This is one of the two theatres found in Pompeii.  It was pretty cool to get to see a real roman theatre as I have been teaching about them for years. The stage floor is missing and most of the stage facade, but the house is pretty intact.  This is looking down at the orchestra and the stage area.

 This one is looking back up the area for the audience.  You can even still see the places where poles were inserted to support the sunshade canvases that were stretched overhead.

A shot of Mt. Vesuvius through the ruins.

 One of the rooms with surviving plaster frescos.  Pretty amazing that these lasted this long.  The colors are really rich and intense and the detail work still shows.

 I think the nice guard we talked to said this was a wine shop.  The round things are vases set into the counter top.  I'm assuming they were filled with various wines and they dipped out whatever you bought.  It has a great fresco still intact on the back wall.

A counter top in another shop.  It was gorgeous!

Some pots still enbedded in volcanic ash rock.

This was the old city wall.  The wall is cool, but the trees are even cooler.  These are Italian pines and we have seen them everywhere!

A really cool central courtyard in a home.  This house had a LOT of fresco work still intact, as well as a lot of floor mosaics.  It felt rich.

A street.  Pompeii was a Roman city and had streets laid out as close to a grid as they could given the terrain.  The streets are large flat stone and were constructed by the Roman empire as civic building.  The tall stones are stepping stones connecting the sidewalks.  We think the grooves in the rocks must have been from wheels wearing away the stone.  You saw them at lot around these stepping stones.

Part of the forum colanade.  It has Roman/latin writing on it.  I took this one for my sister's latin students.

The old grain storage shed is filled with these articles that have been excavated.  There are shelves and shelves and shelves of pottery and other house hold items.  A lot of things have been taken away to museums, but there is still a ton of it here.  I like how all these vases are different colors.

Some archeologist in the past realized that they kept coming to voids in the rock and that these voids had human bones in them.  He figured out that they were where people had fallen in the eruption and died.  Eventually her figured out a method to inject the voids with plaster.  The result was disturbingly detailed depictions of people in their final moments.

The floor mosaics are pretty spectacular.  This one if of a dog guarding the entry door.  It is in the House of the Tragic poet.  

This is a shot inside the baths.  The carving work is unbelieveable.

More floor patterning...

Much like in Rome, there are public water fountains everywhere.  These were built by the Romans to provide water for the city and are fed via underground plumbing.  The water is still drinkable and supposedly quite good.  Cate and I opted for bottled water, but we saw many, many people drinking from them.

This is the bakery.  They found carbonized loaves of bread still in the oven and the bones of the mules laying where they had been harnessed to the millstones.

A street.

A shot of some of the wall frescos.



All in all, Pompeii was pretty cool.  We are exhausted from all the clambering around.  Clearly the ancient romans had great leg muscles.  Those cobblestone are tricky to navigate.  The city was partially closed for winter so we didn't get to see everything we wanted to see, but it was still pretty phenomenal.

Tomorrow we are off to the airport and will be heading home.  I'll be cleaning out my 700+ pictures once I get there and will try to post more good ones from the trip.

It has been an excellent trip.

The Vatican

So today we went to the Vatican.  It turns out that it was closed for a special mass.  We think they were ordaining new archbishops, but as none of us are catholic and can't tell what the clothes mean, we aren't 100% sure on that one.  Either way, the basilica was closed this morning.  We decided to tough it out and stand in line to wait.  For the first part it was pretty cool.  They were broadcasting what was going on inside.  Despite my lack of latin and Italian, it was still amazing to watch.

This is the square.  The pope's balcony is the top center one between the red columns.  He didn't come out.

This was what was playing on the pope TV.  There were four huge screens stationed around the square and giaint speakers broadcasting it all.  Pretty nifty for a little protestant girl.

At some point the service ended.  The congregation came out the main doors, but apparently the bishops and cardinals have a back door.  I had been eyeing these swiss guards for a while.  Once the service was over most of the cardinal type people seemed to be escaping through here.  The picture is fuzzy because I had to use the most zoomed setting.  We weren't anywhere close.  I still didn't see the Pope though.

Finally we got to go in.  It was stupendously amazing.  It was even more amazing than St. Paul's in London and I LOVE St. Paul's.  It is huge for starters and every thing is painted or gilded or frescoed.  Unbelieveably beautiful.

Michaelangelo's Pieta is in here.  I love this one.  Look at all that carved fabric.  I bet the Pope likes this one best.  It is much cooler than all the other statuary (although there is an interesting marble statue of a dead pope dressed up in pope clothes.  I bet that one gives him the willies though...)

 

The light coming through the windows was just breathtaking.  Beams of light everywhere.  It made my little lighting designer's heart happy.  Still no Pope though.

While we were there a mass processional came through with candles and silver Bible and lots of singing.  It sent shivers down your spine.  I didn't get any pictures of that.  The pope wasn't there, but some lesser bishopy looking guy was.
When we left the basilica we made a mad dash to the museum to see the Sistine Chapel.  They don't mean for you to get to that one directly.  He have to wander through 19 more rooms to get to that one and there are no short cuts.  We did find a lovely outdoor area where we saw this.  It is St. Peter's basilica dome.  Someone famous made it, but I am too tired to remember who right now. 

They won't let you make pictures in the Sistine Chapel.  There was a guard there barking at people, so few even tried.  We stared appreciatively and then left by way of a winding circular stair.  Cate and I made a mad dash back to the hotel for our luggage and then on to the train station.  We got to Naple around 9pm, check in and then wandered down the street to a a local pizza place.  The pizza was just allright, but the dessert dish was to die for.  Hot, melty chocolate wrapped in powdered pizza dough.  Oh my goodness.  It was yummy!

Tomorrow we are off to Pompeii and then hopefully back to eat seafood.  Surely in Naples we can find seafood.  Tomorrow night we pack it all up and head back to the airport Monday morning.  Our trip is almost over.

Rome day two

The original purpose of this trip was to attend and present at a workshop here in Rome.  Yesterday and today were marked for conference duties.  Kate has spent the two days trekking around and checking out more sights.  We did take a couple of hours yesterday morning to do a little sightseeing.

The pictures are backwards chronologically.  I can't get blogspot to reverse them, so we will take the day backwards.

These are the Spanish Steps.  They were covered up with student groups, so we didn't go up.  Too much chaos.  We saw these on our way home yesterday.

 Trevi Fountain was really cool.  Quite lovely.

 

  The big highlight for me was finally seeing the Pantheon.  Originally used as the Temple to All Gods, it is now a Catholic Cathedral.  It is truly magnificent inside.

The building was made by the ancient Romans and is cast concrete.  Pretty amazing feat of engineering.

The conference ended today.  My workshop went well and had great feedback.  Tomorrow we will head to the Vatican in the morning and then take the train to Naples.  We will spend Sunday in Pompeii and then head home.  It's hard to believe we only have two days left!

Things I have learned about Italy (so far)

·         Italian hotels don’t believe in washcloths.  There are towels aplenty. There are hand towels galore, usually in a couple of different forms.  My current bathroom has four hand towels- two of a thin linen type and two of regular terrycloth.  I think the last one had four also.  These hand towels are all huge.  There is soap, shampoo and lotion.  There is plenty of toilet paper (contrary to warnings).  There are not, however, any washcloths.  Thankfully I was warned of this and brought disposable washcloths, but I do wonder what the average traveling Italian does for a washcloth.  Do they all bring one from home when they travel?  Why the washcloth and not the towel?  Is there some secret Italian method of bathing that does not require a wash cloth?  Washcloth questions abound.  I am not brave enough yet to question a native about their washcloth habits.  Perhaps google will know…

·         Italians as a whole don’t seem to believe in toilet seats.  THAT has been interesting. 

·         All of Italy seems to be uphill.  You would think the laws of physics would prevent this, but it does seem like Kate and I trek uphill constantly.  Venice is flat, but there are stairs everywhere to get over bridges.  Florence had approximately 9.7 million stairs taking you into the houses and museums and up and down the hills.  Rome really is uphill as the city was built on seven hills.  Plus they really like stairs too.  We shall see about Naples.  I think it is built on a hill side too.  Sigh.  You would be up a creek here if you were in a wheelchair.

·         A Coke costs the same price as a glass of wine.  You can’t seem to get tap water in a glass.  All the water is bottled and you have the option of natural or fizzy.  Water costs only a little less than a Coke or a glass of wine.

·         The population as a whole seems rather blasé about ancient art and architecture.  Ruins are everywhere in Rome especially.  Office buildings and homes are built in and out of ancient roman ruins with no demarcation between the two.  Everywhere you turn there are spectacular sculptures, buildings and art and no one seems really impressed.

·         The best places to eat have owners and waiters that don’t speak English.  You can order a perfectly lovely meal by pointing at things.  So far our most successful culinary forays have been through randomly choosing little hole-in-the-wall joints.  One place in Venice was amazing and the little trattoria we discovered last night was divine.  The better the English the worse the food.

·         Italians are either really friendly or they act as if you don’t exist.  Old Italians are a lot nicer than young Italians.

·         Walking on the sidewalks is almost a blood sport.  If you try to be polite and step to the side you will never make it down the path.  It is a silent game of chicken most times.  Loser has to step out into the street to pass.  Kate and I are channeling NFL and SEC linebackers as we try to go native.

·         Italian drivers make Nashville drivers look like grannies out for a Sunday drive.  We took a taxi in Florence to get to and from the train station and the hotel.  The driver paid no attention to the lines on the road, nor did he recognize the traffic lights.  Even more fun is the fact that pedestrians don’t recognize the demarcation between the sidewalk and roadway.  People were EVERYWHERE and the taxi driver neatly zipped around and between them, sometimes coming right up against them.  All of this was accomplished in silence- no horns, no squealing tires, no Italian profanities.  In Rome, they drive the same way, but they add in the horn.  Rome is a loud city.  They generally recognize crosswalks, but not always.  It’s like the old Atari game Frogger.  On top of the cars careening about merrily, there are eleventy billion little scooters moving in and out of everything.  The scooters don’t recognize any rules at all.  Apparently they are free to zoom between cars, around cars on the shoulder and down pedestrian walkways.  I have yet to see one go over a car, but it wouldn’t shock me at this point.  It seems the Italians still yearn for the old chariot races.  We are still racing about, but have added a combustion engine to the festivities.  NASCAR has nothing on Italian drivers.

·         Gelato is every bit as good as everyone says.

·         There isn’t near as much garlic bread as you would think.  Unless you specify it as just garlic bread, it will come piled high with tomatoes.

·         PETA clearly doesn’t have a presence in Italy.  We have seen a veritable herd of old women in full length fur coats.  They are luscious.  The coats, not the women (although the women seen delightful).

·         Everyone wears really great shoes.  The only tennis shoes and ugly shoes seem to be on tourists.  Italian women seem to prefer heels and apparently walk miles in these heels with no problems.  I would most certainly break my neck.

·         Lastly, Italy is a gloriously chaotic country.  People are everywhere. Pigeons are everywhere.  Dogs are everywhere.  Cats? Not so much.  People bring their dogs with them everywhere. This afternoon I saw a smartly dressed little benji type dog under a cafeteria table happily scarfing up crumbs.  When the elderly couple he was with finished their lunch, he obediently trotted out with them.  Most dogs seem to be off leash and yet they stay right with their people and never seem to run out in the street.  It is remarkable.  My ill-behaved mutts are clearly not Italian dogs.

Rome!

Okay, Rome is cool.  I wasn't sure it would be.  I really thought Florence would be the coolest.  Interestingly enough, Florence has been the least interesting place.  Rome though has been fascinating.  Today we did the Roman ruins.  Oh. My. Goodness.  Unbelieveably cool.

The trip started with Trajan's Baths.  I took several pictures, but as I am about to inundate you with more ruin photos than you can stand, I will refrain from posting these.  I'm sure Kate and I will show them all to you when we get home.  Start popping the popcorn now.

A bit further down the road was the Colosseum.  You cannot believe how enormously cool this building is.  We spent three hours tromping through the ruins.  We only left because we decided we would run out of time for everything else. 

This is the view as we came up to it initially.

On more than one occasion we offered to take pictures of couples.  One very nice couple returned the favor.  Now we have proof that we were together on this trip. 

 The inside.  The white-ish stuff low on the right is original marble seats.  These would have been for the upper class men.  The flat part is a temporary floor.  I don't know why it is in.  They sadly wouldn't let us walk over there.

The area under the floor where the animals and whatnot were stored.  They won't let you down there either.  It is very cool though.  The moss and grass down there were incredibly green.  There were workers all around scraping moss off rocks.  Nature is still fighting for control.

Another shot from ground level.

 We then moved to the Palatine and Roman forum.  This is the stadium at Domus Augustana.  They think that this was more of a garden and riding arena than it was a true stadium.

There is a point up high overlooking the forum.  In this shot the Temple of Vesta is down low at center (home of the Vestal Virgins).  The three columns to the left are from the Temple of Castor and Pollux.  Above those is the Arch of Septimius Severus.  The forum is the grassy area to the right of the three columns and below the arch.  There are some columns bits remaining and some of the original floor.

A column top from the Temple of Saturn.  It was erected in late Republican times.

Hey, look!  Anne is at the Roman Forum!

Kate is too!

Et tu, Brute?  This area is Julius Caesar's forum.  We think this is where he was killed.  Don't quote us on that though.  We probably should look that up.

 These flat rocks are the original floor of Julius caesar's forum.  We didn't check for bloodstains.

 One of the really cool things (or really disturbing things) is that there are all these fragments just laying about.  In America all of this would be hermetically sealed in a museum somewhere.  Here they are just laying around. 

This is a shot of the Forum  from the other direction.  The Temple of Saturn is on the right.  Palantine Hill is in the background.

More random bits just laying around...

We left the Forum and treked our way to the Teatro Marcellus (a Roman theatre).  The outside wall exists, but the rest has been integrated into another building. 

This is the Tiber River.

This is all that is left of the Circus Maximus.  The space is intact, but there are no ruins left.  It pretty much is a dog park now.  The stuff to the left is Palantine Hill and the Roman ruins.

 One last shot of the Colosseum as we headed back home.

 The Roman ruins apparently are crawling with feral cats.  We saw a couple.  They were remarkably philosophical about all the people in their way. 



After leaving the Circus Maximus we wandered our way back home.  We stopped in a tiny little trattoria for dinner.  The owner met us at the door and ushered us back.  His english was about as good as our italian.  We did a lot of pointing.  For the first time we had real garlic bread.  This may be the best garlic bread we have ever had.  The little man was quite proud of himself and gave me the secret recipe.  Bread, garlic, salt.  It was amazing!  Kate had the gnochi (potato dumplings) and I tried the spaghetti.  I'm doing a taste test of piizza, spaghetti and lasagne in all four cities to see which one is the best.  The Great Taste Test of Italy as it were.  This so far the best spaghetti.  A delightful girl from Arkansas joined us for a moment.  She just wanted to hear southern voices for a bit.  She is in the middle of a year's study abroad and was missing the south.  We finished our day with gelato and cannoli.  A sweet ending to a swell day.