Moving to Florence

I hardly have any pictures of the day we arrived in Florence. It was a fair amount of travelling. We took the shuttle into town, hopped on the Circumvesuviana (the band played on), then onto the train from Naples to Florence.  I made a mistake getting off at the wrong stop for Naples, and went to the end of the line instead of the Garibaldi stop (one too far) and we had to turn around and go back.  It would have been just fine, except that when we went to get off,  there was this almighty crowd pushing and shoving to get ON, and Caroline got stuck in it behind me, trying to push her way off.

I went totally Mama Bear and yelled at the top of my lungs "BASTA!" and then "Sono come gli animali!" and reached back to anchor her and pull her down.  Oh, I was SO ANGRY, and scared...I was shaking.  There is no excuse to storm at someone like that when they're trying to get off a train.  It took me quite a while to calm down from that....

But anyway.  We bought our tickets and got on one of the lovely Freccia trains heading to Florence, and all was well again. Caroline conked out, and I stared out the window in joy as we approached, falling in love with the gentle rolling hills in Tuscany.  It set the mood well, because there wasn't much about Florence that I didn't love.

It took a bit of effort to find our hotel. First of all, we found the bus stop - it was almost where I thought it would be, but not quite, and we missed the first one, because we weren't quite where we should have been yet. The second one, we let pass because it was jam-packed.  Wee little bus full to the gills. But by the time the third one came, we'd been waiting about 45 minutes, and I was done. It was full, and we shoved on anyway, and everyone made tolerant room for us and our suitcases, and we got the job done.  We got off at the right place and then wandered helplessly up and down the street for quite some time, asking for the hotel, because we could not find it. But then we did, and all was well. We got buzzed up, they came rushing down to grab out suitcases, took credit cards after all (a great relief, since I was still having bank machine difficulty at that point with Sorrento!!), and finally we were in and settled in our fantastic little apartment.

I loved this place.  SO much.

Here's our little view of the piazza and church.  Not much of a view, but it was fine.  And busy!!  The place really started hopping at night!

I was positively dying of thirst, and went to the nearest grocery store and came home with a ridiculous number of bottles of liquid, breakfast supplies, and a few chips. Then we ventured out into the world to see what we could see.  

I spent a lot of time getting disoriented in Florence. I had one path down pat, but if we deviated...I was all turned around in a second. Caroline had a much better sense of direction than I did.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from our first night.

We wanted to map out our trip to the walking tour the next morning so we knew where we were going. We had to walk right through this piazza, which became very familiar to us in the next few days.

Isn't this beautiful?  There was a "no photo" sign on it, which was patently absurd to me since it was out in public, so I ignored it and photographed it happily.

It was very, very funny to see this store, which was closed (we never got back to it later).  Why on earth??? We have no idea.

The bridal shop instantly had me envisioning shopping for wedding dresses.

The Gucci store, where I laughingly told Meredith I might shop for the purse she wanted (not!).

Ah-hah!  Our meeting place for the morning. All was well, and we could explore and find something to eat.

No.  No, this is not supper. We agreed that it could be dessert, and turned back to the little Trattoria we'd liked the look of, La Cantinetta di Dante e Beatrice.  It had a really friendly and chatty staff, and a nice menu that was reasonable, and jam-packed with flavour.  My photos don't do it justice, because really it was so tasty here we came back again two nights later...

We did very poorly on this quiz...we were repentant and resolved to learn much more about Dante.  (I have since downloaded his book on my Kindle App, but I haven't started reading it yet...)

This looks like NOTHING, right?  But it was SO incredibly good.

So was this - the soup was just so good, I wanted another one, but refrained.

We did go for gelato after dinner, and then had a short wander before walking home to bed.

Our first peek at the Duomo!

There is apparently a fair amount of controversy as to whether the facade of the church is incredibly gaudy or gorgeous. We decided it was gorgeous.  It's a bit overwhelming, but really just so lovely.

NATURALLY, there was some scaffolding on it. Because that's how we see things on vacation....

(Caroline will be at Niagara Falls later this week - I'm really intrigued to see how they might have it scaffolded.)

And then later, we ran into some friendly Florentine police officers.  I asked if I could have a picture (after identifying myself with my badge) and they let me.  Only afterwards did I realise that I looked very unflatteringly like a giantess. Ah, well.  It is also very difficult to take seriously police officers with their hair down, wearing all that jewellery and with these bizarre holsters.

But then, the ones we saw the next day had white purses....bewildering.

That was the end of our day, and we went home to an astonishingly loud room that couldn't have kept us awake anyway, because we were so tired.  We slept like logs.

Day 7: Pompeii

This is the day we were starting off for Pompeii.  A very simple and straightforward trip by the little train (Circumvesuviana) up to Pompeii.  Caroline, as always, fell asleep about four minutes after the train started moving.  Well, not right away.  Not till the BAND got off!!  Yes, we had a band get on the train for a few stops.  Noisy!  Drum, Sax, and Accordian. And a basket, of course, held out for funds.

She is not your ideal travelling companion on public transit.  Tends to fall straight off to sleep, even in the morning after a full night's rest.  I think it's just a lulling thing, not that she suffers from any particular ailment.

Although, come to think of it, we didn't come straight here. We had some time in the pool first.  I will have to go back and add some pool pictures.  Nice pool.

And poof, in about half an hour, there we were, getting off, and it couldn't have been easier. We walked under the tracks and came up and were directed straight to a guided tour.

We bought the tickets for the guided tour (which don't include admission). I think they were 12 euros each, for a tour of about two and a half hours. 

Fresh as a daisy after her nap, she is ready to go.

Pleasingly, because she is under 18, she is free to enter.  This was true in several places in Italy.  It was always very nice when that happened.  You had to be ready for it, though!  I had her passport.  Only a few places didn't ask for ID before giving her free entry. 

Lovely treed walkway on the way to the entrance to the ruins.

So.  A little background, yes?

Pompeii, prior to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, was an important city divided into five regions. The residents thought Vesuvius was just a mountain. Until it got essentially buried in pumice stones - pyroclastic material and ash, 7m deep. There was no lava in Pompeii.

The first excavation started in 1748.  They finished 40 years ago.  Three hundred years of excavation.  66 acres of city.

Pompeii had a population of 20,000. 7,000 of them died in the eruption of Vesuvius.  It happened in the early morning, and many of the inhabitants ran for the sea to escape. At the time, it was only 3km away.  Now, after the eruption - it's 15km away.

Now, there is dark lava rock on the walls of Pompeii. Because when it was originally built, it was built on an erupted volcano, with material from that eruption!  The last eruption of Vesuvius was just a small one in 1944.  It is still monitored, but nothing much is going on in there.

So, Vesuvius is about 10km away, and it's visible over the walls of the ampitheatre, which is one of our first stops.  However, I appear not to have taken a shot where Vesuvius shows.  Oops.

This ampitheatre is older than the Colosseum. The roof, of course, collapsed. The columns are original, covered with plaster as they were, and stucco. The frescoes on the walls of the ampitheatre were badly damaged. It used to be two stories high. You have to imagine the second floor.

This was a large theatre for tragedies and comedies. It has a seating capacity of 2,000 (so it would have been bigger with that second storey). The floor was marble, and there was even a backstage. It's still used today.  In the ages past, the top floor would have been where women, children and slaves sat - regardless of wealth, all females belonged up there. The officials would get the balconies.

The floor was all white marble.  It would have positively gleamed.

It was built with terrific architectonic techniques. The sound is still very much amplified in there.

Stabia Road - Via Stabbiana. This is near one of the seven gates. The raised stones were to give pedestirans safe crossing out of the mud and filth. You can still see grooves in the road from the wheels of the carts.

This, essentially, is one of Pompeii's Mcdonalds. A fast-food joint. There are a lot of them (about 70). Amphoras full of local red wine, heated and mixed with honey and cinnamon, would have gone into some of these holes. There also would have been Garum - a fish sauce, very salty. This building would have had two or three stories. A house would be behind this store, with a wooden sliding door to close up the building at night.

A bakery. There's an original oven in here. They found pieces of carbonised bread inside. There are two original millstones for donkeys to turn and grind the flour. 

There's one of the millstones.

There's an oven. 

Perfectly potable drinking water in a restored fountain.

Now we're arriving at the thermal spa area.  We spent more time in the men's area than the women's, because it's in better condition.

This end was the women's area, though.

Some frescoes still survive inside the spa.

Even some ceiling art.

Detail on a ceiling tile.

These were the lockers, where property would be kept while the owner was in the spa.

There were two plaster casts of bodies preserved in glass in here. Neither of them was found in this area - they just put the bodies where people tended to congregate, afterwards, when they found them. 

I heard someone complaining that the bodies were "just plaster casts," indicating that they really didn't understand at all how those bodies were recovered.  A plaster cast is covering the skeleton, filling up the empty pocket inside the ash that the archeologists fill with the liquid plaster, in the spaces where the tissues have degenerated and decomposed and disappeared. This is the body, essentially.  Plaster-covered skeletons, found under the debris.

This ceiling was created for us. It wouldn't have been open like this, but all closed and dark, holding in the heat.

There's a double wall here, built to hold in the heat.  

These niches would have been filled with statues.

This was a good spot to see the original brick (on the left) and the restoration brickwork (on the right). 

Next we moved on to the brothel area.

This little logia above our head is, of course, a reconstruction.

So's the second floor.  But it gives an idea of what it all looked like. 

The red light district had twenty-five brothels. The city of Rome only had ten!! Prostitution was more or less legal in Pompeii. The called the prostitutes "Lupanari." (she-wolves). 

In fact, the whole Romulus and Remus story of the twins being nursed by a wolf - yeah, that was probably a prostitute wet-nurse. Though the guide at Pompeii disagreed vehemently, the one in Florence agreed later.

This brothel has ten rooms. All very small. There are frescoes outside each room decorating the room with "advertising" for the particular "speciality" of the whore inside, in terms of sexual position or performance. Yeah, I took some photos.

Not exactly the most comfortable room, in my opinion...

There's a bit of original lead pipe in the ground here. There was a decreased life expectancy in ancient times, with the lead piping. They had no idea...

Terrific old wall, isn't it?

A corner sign, advertising that a brothel was to be found down the street - penis essentially pointing the way.

This is a fountain from the Via D'Abbastanza - the Road of Abundance. This is a fountain with the goddess of abundance.

This would have been the residence of someone truly wealthy, given the surviving floor.

The end of the cart way, moving into a pedestrian zone. Some things don't change!

And into Jupiter square.  This was so big!  And there's Vesuvius lurking in the background.

So in here was the Basilica - originally a hall of justice. 

This is the oldest temple, to the Sun God.  The grainary was also off the main hall here. 

This marble frame was actually really cool. It just didn't photograph well in its plastic seal. It marked the entrance to the wool market, if I understood correctly.

Next we had a peek at the "museum" part of the ruins, which were actually fairly chilling. 

The body is real. The wagon is a reconstruction.

I remember seeing this cast as a child, in microfilm movies in school.  It was so weird and sad to see it in real life.

A gladiator, who just sat down and gave up, his mouth covered, trying to breathe, as everything rained down around him.  These are the most powerful images to really make you stop and look at that volcano and put yourself in their place.

And this one, a pregnant woman collapsed in a street. The skeleton of the fetus is inside the plaster, too.

These 12 standing stones were the "Macellum," a market place meeting point. 

Cast of a slave, skull showing.

The statues are reproductions. 

The Temple of Apollo, 7BC, original marble altar and steps. 

Replica statue in situ where original should be.

Little chips of white marble in the streets to help light up the roadway at night.

Looking out that way, though it doesn't show well in this picture, we see modern Pompeii, ignoring the volcano. The population? Around 20,000, just like ancient Pompeii was in 79 AD.

The ancient walls leading to one of the gates, Vesuvius behind.

Exterior walls. I didn't have a guide anymore...

And back at the gates (not the ones we went in, one of the other two that function as entrances).

Waiting for our train.

Here it comes, the ugly little bucket.

Scruffy mess of a train, but it's cheap and does the job.

Back at the hotel for the evening.