Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again

This past Saturday marked the second time that I tried to get to Pompeii on the school trip. Even though last time didn't work out quite as planned, this trip almost went off without a hitch. Sure, there was the 45 minutes that we sat at a rest stop while the bus driver had to remove a mental panel from underneath the bus (it was flapping around and hitting the road - can you say fire hazard?). For that 3/4 of an hour I was wondering if God was trying in some way to prevent us from going to Pompeii, but we did eventually make it!

Pompeii was everything that I expected in an extremely good way. I wasn't expecting a dazzling city, great food, or incredible people watching. But, I was expecting lots of history and that is exactly what I got.

Our tour guide was Carm (as he said "Car with an M on the end"), and man did that guy know his stuff. I felt as if there wasn't a question that I could ask him that he wouldn't know the answer too. I don't know if the things that I saw can really be described in a way that can be understood without actually seeing the sites. But, I will say that it is just mind blowing how well everything was preserved. I was able to see original frescoes, walk on the marble that the residents of Pompeii walked on, sit in the amphitheater that they sat in (and hear my voice echo in it too!), and see their ovens and wine bars.

One of the most interesting things that I learned about were the casts of many of the people that were killed by the carbon monoxide that was released alongside the soot and lava that faithful day when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. It was one of the people doing the excavations who realised there were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so they devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to perfectly recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. What I got to see in Pompeii were the creepily accurate forms of the residents of Pompeii's last moments before death. In some of the casts their faces are quite clear, and you can see the signs of terror - in fact, one of the casts was slightly bigger than it should have been because the victim died shaking back and forth.

Another interesting thing that Carm showed us an ancient brothel. There were erotic frescoes all over the walls. Carm said that most likely men would come in, point to what they wanted on the wall, and, well, go about it. We were told that Pompeii was quite famous for their so-called red-light district, and when tradesmen would come into port, they would make a beeline for this location. The people in Pompeii did not speak the same language as most of their visitors, so there were phallic shaped arrows pointing them in the right direction. Lovely, right?

I'm happy that I finally was able to make it to this lovely little part of Italy. As we were getting ready to board the bus I was lucky enough to find the perfect charm to add to my charm bracelet. This part of Italy is known for making cameos, and I found one that depicted Mt. Vesuvius and a bit of Pompeii. Perfection.