Away from Lazio Region & into Campania, we arrived. Took a nice guided tour of the ancient city of Pompeii once we arrived in the city of Pompei - this is getting confusing now! We had no free time to wander around while in Pompeii. The tour was informative & interesting but moved so quickly. Missing lots of great photo moments on this tour. I thought we'd have time to goof off & pose for photographs, but we just had to sneak them in as we went. There were a lot of ruins, and a pretty organized system of streets, water pipes, stores & homes.
We saw Mt. Vesuvius looming in the distance and our tour guide told us if you held up your hands to line up with the sides of the mountain, then you could see how tall it used to be, and when it erupted, half of the mountain blew off. That's pretty intense. Mt Vesuvius erupted in 79AD, and the winds sent all the ash over to Pompeii that day. It buried the city in 20 feet of ash and people were believed to have suffocated from that, but I read that most people died from the intense heat that blew through with the winds. The city wasn't discovered again until 1749.
We saw several plaster casts of bodies & animals. Some of the bodies you can still see people's bones, teeth & skulls. That's pretty intense! When they were excavating the site, they found pockets in the ash layer where the bodies had decomposed, but the bones were still intact. They filled the pockets with plaster and were able to preserve these last horrifying positions. We also saw a brothel where there are still paintings of all the "menu" items you can choose while visiting. They even made sure to place a stone penis in the sidewalk a few blocks away pointing the direction to it. I found that really funny - oh priorities! When we were leaving, they told us that the city used to be walking distance to the ocean, and now it is several miles away since the eruption caused the coastline to change.
Before I knew it, we were out the gates and now had free time for lunch. Lunch? I wish they told us about our free time before we left the exhibit, but I guess they want to keep us together. Grabbed a caprese sandwich for lunch (which was bland) and a cannoli which was delicioso!
Back on the bus and traveling south to Sorrento. Our hotel was on a hill overlooking the ocean. Swimming at the hotel already and it was pretty great. Staring out into the ocean then up at the beautiful white facade and red shutters of the hotel. This is Italy and this is great!!!
Off to town for drinks (Prosecco!) and a view of the Bay of Naples then a walk to dinner for pizza - delicious, fabulous pizza!! It took forever to get any due to our numbers but it was so worth the wait. We have a tour group of 51 people & they only brought us out a slice at a time. I kept wishing they'd bring whole pizzas to our table, but that never happened. We did all get 3 slices but it took a couple hours. Every slice was savory goodness! The last slice had corn on it. I thought, wow this is odd, but oh it was so good. For dessert we had chocolate cake and Limoncello (made locally) - I approve!
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