Naples and Pompei

See the first posts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

First off, I gotta say, it's been SO MUCH fun re-living our trip with you guys. (All 5 of you that read this blog.) Even if some of you may see them and are like, "Geez, MORE Italy??", I don't care. Combining my journal with my pictures has been awesome and I'm loving it. So there. Read on if you want. Don't if you don't. "I've said my peace and I've counted to three."

We took a day tour that took us to the towns of Naples and Pompei. It was a little misleading because all we did was drive to the pier in Naples and drop some of the people off at their boat for their tour of Capri. Then, we made a loop around the city center and headed out of town. It was ok though. What I really wanted to see was Pompei.


I don't know what this was, but it looked like a castle in Naples...and I LOVE castles...which is why I would love to have the money and the vacation time to go see Melodee in Scotland right now.


Here is a view of the port of Naples. This was the day we were closest to the fires in Southern Italy, so you can see some of that smoke.


A very smoky shot of Mt. Vesuvius.

After Naples, we went to Pompei and had dinner with the rest of the people on tour. We ended up sitting next to a very nice man and his son that were from Nebraska. It was old home week for Jerod and we had a really cool visit with them. It's a small world afterall.


And then on to hot hot HOT Pompei....where shade is scarce and strained ankles are many. This is a good view of one of the streets that had shops on it.


Here are some remains of a temple.


Here is the town center square. There is another temple at the far end. I want to say it was a temple for Apollo, but I'm not entirely sure about that.


Here is a closeup of that Apollo temple.


Here is a plaster cast of a body that was buried by the ash and lava of Mt. Vesuvius. They deduced that this was a pregnant woman. It's really a heartbreaking thought.


Here is another plaster cast of a woman. You can't see it very well through the glass, but I think they also thought that this woman was pregnant. You can also see in the background some pottery they excavated. Ok, enough with the dead people pictures...


This was the public restroom. Lovely, huh? I'm not sure how it all worked...


This was actually a restaurant. Their equivalent to McDonalds, the tour guide said. :) So, it was like a fast food restaurant with a counter and tables.

Since I have a ton more pictures, I will post the rest of Pompei tomorrow. I took a lot of pictures there, but I also don't want to post too many to look at. So, until tomorrow!!