Split Day In Photos POMPEII - Italy

I'm dividing this day up into twos as so much happened and there are so many great photos - I don't want to overwhelm either of us....

We left Sardinia bright and early on Saturday morning - we pulled out of our driveway around 6 a.m. to get to the airport in Cagliari.

We got in our seats in our little row on our little plane and Brittany pulled out her little barf bag that we decided to take with us for future driving through rough and tumble roads....

And we jetted off back over to the mainland.... As we looked down to say goodbye to Sardinia, I was able to see all those twisty, windy, hilly roads we sped over while on our expeditions throughout the island.

We got to Rome by about 10:30 and collected our bags, hit the rental car counter and got our new stickshift wagon (which pretended to be our "old" one on Sardinia only it was a horse of a different color - literally - it was a little black one - a crappy black one :((... My navigator, Kim, got into her little seat next to mine and she barked her orders to get us out of the airport and on our way down to the Amalfi region which is known for its citrus fruits - YUM!

 But, before we quite hit the Amalfi region, our first stop was Pompeii which I had heard was really amazing.... and indeed it was....
Here we are at the city entrance.....

 The main "gathering" area of the city....

 Reminiscent of The Music Man ("One Grecian Urn"... - I don't think Brittany and Melody quite knew what I was talking about when I said it, but they were polite and laughed anyways...)

 It was pretty cool to look at these ancient ruins and see all this writing and painting and all that still existed from earlier times....

 And then there were the people that existed from the time of the eruption of Vesuvius thousands of years ago.... There were two plaster casts of people that were still found in the ash.  There were a lot of people who left before the eruption but they guesstimate there were about 2000 left behind who died in the lava and ash....

 Don't these look like big legos - or those candy block things.... It was early building blocks for Hercules types....

This is the floor in the bath house - isn't it amazing how all that tile has lasted so beautifully!

 Inside the bath house...

 This was a bowl that helped create steam in the steam room.  The engravings along the edges is the name of the man who donated the bowl - and the date he donated it - and the amount he paid for it when he donated it.... He was known as "The Humble  Man of Pompeii"..... That WAS NOT engraved on the bowl - I just made a presumption... :)

 This is across the street from the baths.  Its literally the "Fast Food" court.... the holes were where they kept bowls of food which were over flames or steam so that it kept warm or cooked.  The average person did not cook in their home as they didn't have the facilities so they would always "eat out" at these locations - kind of "take away", as the British call it.

 This is the "back" of the city - the mountain in the distance is Vesuvius.

 This is the doorway to the house of one of the wealthiest men in Pompeii - it was almost a little city of its own inside "the house"...  I'm not sure what the HAVE means, but its Latin for something.

 This is right when you walk in the entryway - I forget which Greek god this is....

 Again - amazing how the tile and stonework is so well-preserved...

 A fresco on the floor - in tile.

 Down farther is the bakery - this is where they made bread for most of the city.

 The streets were pretty amazing.  Two things about them - the used to keep water running down them daily to wash away all the garbage and bad smells and such and because of this it was hard to cross the streets without getting wet so they made these raised stones as walk ways for people to cross the street without getting wet.  Ingenius, huh?  The other cool thing is you can see the chariot ruts in the road as well.... Thats a lot of chariot traffic!

 This is one of the colesiums... there was a larger one but it wasn't open the day we were there.

 Again - another humble Pompeiian has claimed his seat by scrawling his name across it for all eternity....

 Leaving the city - a view looking back as we cross the city wall.

Some of the massive citrus they grow in the area!

 And a refreshing glass of fresh squeezed orange juice as we leave -- YUM!