Day 25 - The Voyage Home and Pictoral Recap

The morning of our departure we were packed up and sitting on the Circumvesuviana before 6:30 am. Even taking this earliest of trains out of Sorrento, we made it to Naples with barely enough time to catch our scheduled transport back to Rome. We ended up in one of those clasic movie scenes where a family is rushing through some foreign train station dragging their suitcases desperately behind them. It was exactly the sort of situation Handler 1 had wanted to avoid. Alas.

Arriving in Rome, the Handlers found that we had a substantial layover before we had to catch a train to the airport. We decided to take a quick side jaunt to the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, which was just across the street from the station, and which Handler 2 dubbed the Church of SCIENCE! The structure was constructed in part of the Baths of Diolcletian (which were unfortunately closed that day), and has been decorated in honor of scientific discoveries. There's a sun dial constructed into the marble floor, and a number of other scientific contraptions decorating the walls. There was also an explanation of the Gallileo excommunication affair (which the Catholic church appears now to feel a bit bad about).

Upon returning to the station, the Handlers found that they probably didn't have enough time to eat, which annoyed Handler 1, who was getting hungry. Instead, we trudged out (once again, 1/4 mile away from the station's main doors) to catch the Leonardo Express to the airport. Once there, the travel back to the states was comparatively uneventful. The grandhandlers picked us up from the Detroit airport, and the Handlers resumed their daily grind the next day.

So, what did we learn from our 3 week European extravaganza? Here's a few gems:

1. Trasportation in Italy...sucks.

2. The common conception of French hautiness and dislike for Americans is exaggerated. Almost all of the French folks we interacted with were absolutely lovely and accomodating.

3. French food is, on the whole, better and cheaper than Italian food.

4. Three hours is not enough time for the Louvre.

5. French kings were assholes.

6. The Italians really don't want you photographing their art. The French couldn't care less what you do with your camera.

7. Do not stay at a zero star hotel in Europe. They are not the equivalent of similar such establishments in America.

8. Get the tourist passes.

9. Strangely enough, you can apparently knock out a taillight on a rental car in Europe and not get billed for it...or at least...we haven't yet.

10. Doing laundry is a terrible waste of good vacation time.

To finish off our narrative, here's a photographic retrospective of the trip, comprised of some of Handler 1's better black and white photos.

































































So what's next for us intrepid travlers? I don't know. For once, the Handlers have no trips planned for the future, and they don't seem to be taking my advice on anything. Perhaps I can convince the grandhandlers to smuggle me into Russia with them this summer! In any case, maybe I'll post a short recap of the Handlers' adventures in Boston (the traitors didn't take me along!). Otherwise, we'll just have to wait and see.

Day 24 - Naples and Other Ruins

Today we were heading back to Naples for a short visit. Seeing as how we'd had so much trouble with the slowness of the Circumvesuviana, and we knew we had to be in Naples bright and early the next day to hop a train to Rome, Handler 2 thought it would be a good idea if we timed how long our trip to Naples would be. It turned out to take just about an hour....which would be cutting it pretty close for the next day. We'd have to leave on the very first train out of Sorrento and hope for no delays in order to be able to make our connections. The Handlers worried, but realaized there was nothing to be done about it just then.

We made our way to the (rather confusing) subway location and picked up a train to the "museum district".

I don't know if you live in a big city, but they're not always the nicest or prettiest of locations. Take Detroit, for instance, where the Handlers work. Large portions of Detroit are not very pretty at all and the Handlers would strongly advise you not to go there. But, in general, cities (even Detroit) try to keep their cultural centers clean and presentable for those tourists that want to visit there.

This is not the way things are done in Naples.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like its a bombed out wasteland or anything. It's just that the Handlers didn't expect the walk from the nearest subway station to one of the most fmaous museums in all of Italy to take them through a very rough seeming park full of sketchy persons and dog doodoo. Lots of dog doodoo. Anywhoo, that's what we call "local color", and it's an important part of travel.

Finally, we arrived at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. It's got a bunch of big statuary, like this famous representation of the Farnese Bull.

However, the real treasure of this museum is the artwork removed from Pompeii. Apparently, early excavators weren't entirely stupid, because they knew enough to remove some of the best pieces (wall and all) from the city and preserve them indoors. If you're wondering where all the great artistic works of Pompeii are, they're framed in this museum.

This spectacular mosiac depicting Alexander the Great's victory over Darius was removed from the floor of the House of the Faun that we explored yesterday.



There's also an etire room of erotic art.

Mars cops a feel.

Then it was off to Herculaneum, which, much like Pompeii, was covered and preserved by the Vesuvius explosion of 79 AD. Ancient Herculaneum currently rests directly beneath the modern city of Herculaneum. Here you can see present day apartment blocks resting above the 2000 year old cityscape.

Herculaneum used to be right on the shoreline. These are the shipping docks where citizens gathered hoping for an escape by sea (notice the cliff on the right which indicates current ground level).



Herculaneum was closer to Vesuvius than Pompeii. Although you would think this would make it more subject to wholesale destruction, it ultimatelty resulted in the overall preservation of the city. Since Pompeii was farther from the volcano, it experienced less pyroclastic flow (Google it, it's nasty stuff). The result of this was that Pompeii was buried in a lot less dense material. This means that it was easier to dig out, which ultimately contributed to its excavation (read: looting) as early as the 18th centruty. Herculaneum didn't come to light until much more recently, after the advent of modern archaeological techniques.

Additionally, because of the rapidity with which Herculaneum was buried by incredibly hot material, more "organic" materials such as wood and rope managed to survive. In other words, despite being closer to the killing epicenter, Herculaneum is more intact than its better known sister city. That means you get the remains of people's personal effects, like this original sliding door/room divider.



Those wall paintings that remain are in a lot better condition than those at Pompeii, as well.



The houses even have second stories (here the wood of the balcony has been added, and the roofs, but the rest is original.)



Sometimes, the intact upper floors still retained their painted ceilings.



And there are a bunch more mosaics than you could find in Pompeii.



The people of Herculaneum want you to know that they are not, and never have been, Nazis.

All in all, Herculaneum was more "complete" than Ponpeii, despite being smaller. And so, though the grandhandlers had warned us we would be disappointed with the site after visiting Pompeii, we really weren't.



Oh, and then there was this shrine to Cuthullu.



No seriously, Handler 1 found this random cave leading into the hillside. There were no lights and, seeing as how it was getting dark outside, we could barely see to pick our way into it. This creepy statue was there along with some sort of plaque which we couldn't read. We have no idea what it was but, apparently, if we had continued on up the passage through parts that are blocked to the public, we would have come upon a partially excavated theatre, that is still under the hill on which the visitors center is located.

As the evening advanced, the lights inside the more complete of the Herculaneum homes began to shine out onto the ancient streets. If you didn't know better, you could almost imagine that people still lived in those houses and that the warm glow of hearth fires was peeking through windows and helping to guide the way of passers-by.



With heavy hearts, we traveled back to our Sorrento digs, packed up for one final time, and grabbed dinner (nothing special) at a restaurant a bit off the main Sorrento drag. We'd have a loooong trip on the following day, going from Sorrento back to Detroit, following the sun. A good preparation rest was in order. So, knowing that the next time we slept it would be in our own beds, for the first time in a long time, we went unhappily to sleep.

Day 23 - This Was Pompeii

Today we traveled 6 arduous stops up the Circumvesuviana, and 2000+ years back in time, to visit the ancient city of Pompeii. As with most touring in Italy, getting there was half the battle (the other half, curiously, not battle).

After a heartening breakfast, we headed out to catch the train. You may recall that we found the train to be a bit slow the previous night. There were also some issues with obtaining passes. You see, Handler 1 had secured us passess that would get us into most of the archeological sites in the area, as well as allow us to use local public transport. But, because we had gotten in to Naples so late the previous evening, the tourist location where we were supposed to pick up the passes was already closed. So the Handlers had to buy us tickets from Naples to Sorrento, and then from Sorrento to Pompeii. Handler 1 knew she could pick up the passess at Pompeii, but it was still annoying.

We arrived at the train station to find the train waiting with its doors open, already fairly full of commuters. Figuring that it would soon be pulling out of the station, we raced aboard and found ourselves a spot to stand near a handrail (as all the seats were taken). And we waited.

And more people got on. And we waited.

And an American woman traveling with her elderly parents began to get worried because she wasn't sure they could stand for 30+ minutes like they had been and then have to stand throughout the entire train trip as well.

And more people got on. And we waited. And finally the train began moving.

Only to stop at another station less than 3 minutes later.

Did I mention this train was full? Like, people standing hip to hip full? And the air conditioning wasn't on?

Well, I've heard a lot about the rudeness of tourists in foreign countries, but we were not the ones to complain. The English family of 4 squished up against us did not complain. Nor did the worried American or her elderly parents. Nor did the apparently Greek parents traveling with their little girl (who luckily had a seat). No, it was some local guy who marched out of the train at the next stop and started an angry "discussion" in Italian with the conductor.

The a/c got turned on.

After a seemingly interminable time, we arrived at Pompeii Scavi and the mass exodus from the train began. It was rather late in the morning and the Handlers were worried about there being a big line at the site. Luckily it was still manageable, but it turned out that you could not get the passes Handler 1 had reserved at the ticket counter. Rather we were directed to the gift shop (of course there's a gift shop, you have to exit through something). There, the clerk was on the phone for 15 minutes or so trying to figure out what he was supposed to do with us, before he finally handed us our passes.

By this time the line for tickets was extremely long.

Being practical, Handler 1 decided to ignore the line completely and go straight to the teller she had spoken with before. Apparently, this was the right thing to do, as she was immediately served and provided with tickets to Pompeii.

Finally, our visit could begin.

2000 year old 'Welcome' mat.

Here we are in the forum. Yes, that is a giant, town destroying volcano in the background.

It was already getting crowded, so Handler 2 implemented her plan to head directly to the back of the excavated city, to those portions which aren't viewed on most organized tours. This took some time as the Handlers couldn't quite pass by the open doorways to homes and shops without peaking in, but eventually we found our way to the most remote corner of the archaeological park and began our own personal tour. Starting with, the stadium...
The Not Particularly Large House.

Gladiators lived and trained in this complex nearby.

These grapevines, growing in the shadow of Vesuvius, were planted along the lines where casts revealed ancient grape roots had been planted.

This was the larger of 2 amphitheatres.

At one point our wanderings took us "backstage" a bit. We swear there was a trail there and a map that seemed to show that you were allowed to walk there, but it was more than a little off the beaten track. Eventually, we found a staicase and a (closed but unlocked) gate leading back into the main city area, but we're still not sure it was entirely kosher for us to be there. Anyways, it gave us an elevated view of Pompeii that most folks don't get to see.

It should be noted that, especially during our first few hours of touring, Handler 2 was uncharacteristically silent. He basically didn't speak to Handler 1 or anyone else for 2 hours straight. That has to be some sort of record,at least for Roman archaeological sites. Needless to say, he was impressed.

We took about 300 photos just of Ponpeii, and giving any sort of detailed overview of these would greatly exceed my bandwidth. As such, I'm just going to throw out some of the better shots and let them (for the most part) speak for themselves.

2000 year old graffiti.

This was the 79AD equivalent of a McDonald's.

This next photo shows one of the rooms in the famous House of the Mysteries. It's not on your average tour and you have to walk about 500 yards past what appears to be a gate out of Pompeii (but which actually isn't) to get to it. The pictures here were covered over with some sort of wax base when they were unearthed and, as such, have survived much better than some of the other house paintings. The scene depicted is believed to represent the beginning stages of the initiaition rites into the cult of Bacchus.

The aptly named House of the Faun

Hey, LYA? Whoever you are? You suck.



This next photo is possibly Handler 1's favorite of the entire trip.

Although we saw miuch of Pompeii, it turns out that a full day of touring is not, in fact, enough to see it all. In particular, Handler 1 was unhappy to find that the famous House of the Vetti was closed, and we never did find the other baths. Oh well, we'll just have to go back!


Afterwards, we returned to the modern world, found a nice (but expensive, as was the rule in Italy) restaurant, and did a little shopping in downtown Sorrento. Handler 1 was hoping to be able to show Handler 2 some of the rocky shoreline of the Amalfi coast, but we were unable to find any sea accessible streets. Instead, we contented ourselves with buying some limoncello from a place where it was distilled right in the back room of the shop. You can't get much more authentic than that!

Tomorrow, we see yet more volcano destroyed/preservedurbn centers!