POMPEII

(PROVISO: I'm writing this without having had a guide or a book to read, and with limited access to internet.)

Imagine a bustling thriving city 2000 years ago with 11,000 people, roads for chariots, side walk food vendors, drinking fountains at regular intervals, homes for the rich, homes for the plebs, and who knows what for the slaves.

Temple of Apollo, forums, odions, amphitheatres, Gladiator pitches, and all the rest that comes with the Romans. This in the central part of town and some other places.

Imagine symmetrical gardens in courtyards, and vineyards that produced enough for the population and to be exported.

Beautiful big clay urns for carrying water or wine.

And somewhere, I don't know where, were the brothels with a full and bawdy menu.

All this developed from  around 300 BC. And in 79AD people were becoming familiar with regular earthquakes until on 24 August that year Vesuvius blew her top, releasing deadly gasses that would suffocate people and then cover them and their town with ash.

A writer in another town whose brother was in Pompei wrote about it. So there were records and it was known that there was a buried town underground, but work to excavate did start in proper until the 1860s.

Archaeologists worked painstakingly to remove 3-6 metres of settled ash and dirt and reveal the story of this town underneath. It's still being uncovered and restored.

The difference between Akrotiri on Santorini and this is that so many people died on site at Pompei. As archaeologists dug they found the now empty moulds of where people had been, in the very position they had been struggling at the time of their deaths.

Casts have been made from these hollows and have been exhibited around the world.

As for my story of going to Pompeii it was a little ridiculous. Crowding into a train from Sorrento, standing. Remembering Rosie's and Lous advice 'dont buy a ticket until you're inside the complex' and take a guide. Guides are advertising themselves along the ticket queue. A man who I don't like the sound of, and a woman who I do. I ask how it works - she says buy your ticket and join those people over there. We are leaving pronto.

When I get the ticket I found they had gone. Oh well, I thought, they can't be far away. So I went in and couldn't find them anywhere. Then I realised everyone had a map but I didn't. I asked another English  speaking guide if I could join her but she said it was a private tour.

So I just thought I will follow my nose. And when I came to a point of interest I'd eavesdrop on guides. So I got a bit of Italian, a bit of French and sometimes English.

Later I realised I did have a map in a tourist brochure and I asked a German man where I was. From here I could navigate.

So that is how I made my way around Pompei for about 5 hours. And yes, my leg was very sore.

I'm pleased I brought a packed lunch and that I could fill up the fordable waterbottle Rosie gave me at the many drinking fountains around Pompeii.

Again standing on the  Circumvesuvio Train on the 12 stops home. I charged my phone and kindle and then went out for dinner and WIFI, where I spent a small fortune considering I'd made my own breakfast and lunch.

Bo.