Under the snow covered volcano.

Sorry, we wrote this days ago but forgot to post it. Silly us. We went from Matera to Naples by bus on Wednesday I think, and spent three nights there, we've since moved on to Rome - more on that later. So here is our belated Naples post.

 

It is quite strange to see the volcano sitting there so quietly and serenely. And to walk around the tall skinny streets of Naples and then go to Pompeii. What a horrific but amazingly fortunate situation. To think that an entire city can just come to a complete halt forever but to remain virtually intact is quite bizarre and ghoulishly interesting. We walked most of the site and although most of it is just paved streets and ruined houses there are parts that are more interesting and you can actually imagine how the houses might have looked. They were much grander than any Neo Italiano designs we see in Australia but I can see where they are coming from now. The streets were quite amazing as are all the streets we have been walking on for the last 2 weeks. How do they make so many cobbled streets? We haven't seen any Tarmac in cities for ages - so much work cutting, carrying, laying, and everything fits so perfectly.

The wear and tear on the streets had us questioning how on earth did they drive on the streets without buckling their wheels or breaking ankles walking on them. Notice they three big lumps up the street? What were they for? It took us most of the way around Pompeii to work it out.

 

 

This place is a bodega and if you were going to die possibly one of the better places to be on the day. The huge great big ceramic holes in the bench would have been full of wine (hic).

Yes that is me looking horrified. Paul has just told me this is the new milling machine he has bought for our bread making, the oven is in the background and it seems the wood is a very long way away.

Well there are mosaics and there are crazy mosaics and this is a crazy one. Certainly not the smallest pieces we have seen but this floor was quite large and the white pieces quite small. Someone certainly would have been seeing black and white dots after a days work on this.

What did we learn at Pompeii? It was a fantastic place in its time. It is quite poignant to think that all of these people remain alive through their death. Pompeii lives on.

This has taken me over an hour to write and in that time I have drunk one quarter of my first espresso. I am not sure I will manage the rest.

Oh the bumps they are for people to cross the street on without getting into the mud, water, rubbish. An old fashioned zebra crossing.