Pompeii

Remember that 7:25 am train we told you about, that came and went and we decided, as we have in the past, that not waking up that early was more important than catching our train. I guess that one of the many lessons we have learned on this trip is that we don't want to wake up really early on vacation. We got up at around 9 and after breakfast at our hotel, we headed to the train station. We got a new ticket for a train that left for Naples at 10:40. When we got to Naples, we headed right to the train that took us to Pompeii. It was a pretty quick ride and we heard a guy on the train telling another couple about how he had just been pick pocketed. :-( It was a sad, but a nice reminder to be very careful. We had a quick lunch right across the street from the entrance to the ruins and then got our audio guide and our tickets and headed off into the dust. It was fascinating. I expected a city that was built in the 2nd century B.C.E. to be very simple with no real plan, containing unimpressive, small, buildings. But Pompeii was not like that at all! The streets were paved with stones and mostly straight. There were obvious main streets and minor ones. Also, there were a lot of stray dogs there. They were all friendly and just slept, but it was still very odd. We learned about their complex government system and saw where each of their three branches met. We saw their court room and learned about how the judges and juries made decisions (sound familiar?). They had a performing arts center with two theaters and a large "lobby" area in between. They told us that the smaller theater was designed to have great acoustics. It was all very impressive and difficult to imagine that this was the way that it was in 72 C.E. when everything ended for them.

Some of my favorite buildings we were able to go in were the baths and the lupo-something (sorry I forgot the name). The baths consisted of a dressing room with shelves where the Romans could leave their personal items and clothes while they went inside. This was followed by a sports area and swimming pool. The Romans would work out before bathing. The next step was, for a fee, the massages and rubs. They had a whole room full of salts, oils, ointments, and soaps that they could get rubbed with. After their massages, they went to the hot bath. This was a large room with a hot pool in it. They could use it as a hot tub or a sauna or both as the whole room was heated. They heated it by the walls and floor of the hot room being hollow. There was a big fire in another room that connected to and heated the gaps in the walls and floors. I think that is brilliant and so cool! There was a window on a piece of the floor and a chunk of one of the walls missing so we could see the gaps. After the hot bath they went through a transition room where only one of the walls was heated so it was just warm. Past that was the cold bath. They took a dip into a bath that was fed water by a nearby spring, so you can imagine how cold it must have been. At that point they went back into the dressing room and if their clothes were still there, they got dressed and went home. Many people would have their slaves sit and watch their stuff or would pay someone to watch it.

The lupo-something was the brothel. The one we went in was the most well organized one of 25 in the city!This one had 10 small rooms, each with a stone bed built into the wall. They put a mattress on top of it. There was a bathroom in it too, the nicest one we saw with a seat and everything! The funniest part was the frescos on the walls. They had painted erotic scenes on the walls "to inspire the clients to try some new positions," said our audio guide. There were some interesting ones up there too. It is so weird to think of the Romans that were alive in the 1st century CE having sex for pleasure and being so creative and blatant about it.

At around dinner time we took the regional train back to the train station where I grabbed a slice of pizza and we got on the train to go back to Rome. For the last few days, we have seen a lot of people wearing these nametags that say "keep an eye out" or "watch out" or something like that I don't remember exactly. I thought it was a pickpocket awareness program. On the train two woman wearing those nametags sat next to us. I asked them about it and she just said, "Oh, well we're Jahova's Witnesses here on a big conference! You should come to our big program this weekend." Our immediate thought was, "Oh no, we're going to get preached at for the next hour," but they didn't bring it up again. We talked about school and told them about our trip and asked about theirs. Then I read the USA today and Rachel watched TED talks.

We got back to Rome and got some dinner then came home.