Pompeii

We took the 20 minute train from Naples to tour Pompeii yesterday morning. It was a cloudy, drizzly day but we forged on! Hey! you only get one day in Pompeii right? We were surprised at the size of Pompeii, about 160 acres that was totally buried in volcanic ash from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. It's the largest excavation ever, I can't imagine how long it took to uncover the city of about 15,000 people, that was totally immersed in 1-2 meters of volcanic ash.

Hector was our informative guide for the day and we learned a lot. To recover the bodies an air pocket would be discovered by an archeologist and the cavity would be filled with plaster, left to harden and then the entire form of the body could be excavated. The body that was originally trapped by the volcanic ash eventually decomposed and left the empty air space. Many people were unable to escape the ravages of Vesuvius because there were only 7 entry gates through the city wall.

After rambling through the many streets of Pompeii we took the train to Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples where many of the recovered artifacts of Pompeii are housed. We saw discovered jewels, cooking ware, glasses, medical equipment, artwork...I think we had the full Pompeii experience.

My first impression of Italy some 20 years ago hasn't changed much. From my experiences I've surmised that Italian people are not very friendly. Most of the areas we have visited aren't tourist friendly. Even in the huge museum there were no maps in English and very few displays have English explanations. The transportation system is not user friendly-hardly any maps, NOTHING in English and rude people for the most part. I have ran into an occasional Italian person that will smile and try to make conversation. Yesterday on the train there was an older woman that tried to talk to me some and on the way to Pompeii two young male students on their way to school were excited by the novelty of Americans and wanted to try out their English speaking skills, but for the most part they are NOT friendly! In fact yesterday we were so grateful when we approached a uniformed train personnel at the station for directions to the correct platform and he was SO helpful even walking us to the ticket station and assisting us in obtaining our tickets and then walked us to the correct platform, what a nice guy, NOT! When we arrived at our train he promptly asked for 20 Euros for his services-$30!! and we thought we had finally found a really friendly Italian, no just a Italian con-man!! Mark reminded the boys that is why God instructs us to be friendly to strangers, to not take advantage of strangers because it is a powerful witness to the world of the difference of a Christian. Well, if that's the worse thing that happens to us while we are here we are blessed.

We are all up early again this morning-0500! Breakfast isn't served until 0730 so Dustin is reading, Nathan is on his computer, Ethan is watching a movie, Mark is working and I'm blogging! We leave Naples this morning driving up the west coast of Italy toward Genoa where we will board our cruise ship on Saturday afternoon. Getting out of Naples in the rental car may prove to be quite exciting, I'm just praying our rental comes with an English GPS!!

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