Roma: Day Six

Pompeii and Naples - Happy All Saints Day (which is actually a celebrated holiday in Italy)!

Today we got up early (yes, again) and caught a train to Naples. From Naples we caught another train to Pompeii and we spent the majority of the day wandering through the city of Pompeii. It was really quite interesting and a little sad. Overall, it was pretty neat to see the more complete remains of first century Roman life. 

The remains of frescoes on the walls.

*warning*

They used to think that the citizens of Pompeii were killed by suffocation from the ash, which seems like a horrible way to die and makes you wonder why they couldn't escape it better. However, I was reading an article from National Geographic that suggests that a wave of heat (about 300°C/570°F or above) is really what killed these people. Also they suggest that the contortions of the bodies are from the extreme heat causing muscle contractions and not from suffering a slow death. That perspective somehow makes me feel better.

You can see the ruts from wheels in the paving stones!

This was a baker's house. See the oven in the back, and these stones are mill stones.

The amphitheater 

Inside the amphitheater, not quite as big as the Colosseum, but still very big. 

After Pompeii, we walked through the present day city of Pompeii (not much to see) to get back to the train station. We did get to enjoy some freshly squeezed orange juice and bought a couple of oranges to take back to Rome with us (they were delicious).

We got back to Naples and took a metro to the Archaeological Museum, so that we could see some artifacts from Pompeii. It was dark by this time and the three block walk from the metro station to the museum was a little sketchy. We toured the museum and had two options. We could either get back to the metro and take it to the train station and wait for two hours... or we could take the Rick Steves' walk from the museum back to the train station. We knew that our first three blocks were a little sketchy, but we also had two hours to kill until our train... so we walked.

Rick Steves says that Naples is "colorful". Let me put it this way, if Rome were New York; Naples would be New Jersey. We discovered that our three block temperature of Naples was correct.. the entire town is a little sketch. We couldn't get back to Rome fast enough! Sorry Naples, but we won't likely be back! It was a long day and a long train ride home (we had to take the slower crummy trains, so two hours instead of one). Needless to say, I didn't take any pictures.. I was too afraid to have my camera out and look more like a tourist. Well, at least we can say that we've been there!