Day 59 of the “where’s my…” tour.
Blimey, where’s all that time gone?!
We’re calling it the “where’s my..” tour because we’ll both be exclaiming, multiple times a day, “where’s my” such and such as we panic about glasses, debit cards, passports, van key, etc etc etc. To date though, its just me that’s managed to mislay my beard trimmers. Though technically they’re not lost, I know exactly where they are – Winkl Campsite near Berchtesgaden… I know I left them on the shelf in the washroom! 🤣
A bit of an epic day today! 7.5 hours at the Pompei Archeological Site and a chat with Dan Snow!
Well, two sentences with Dan!
And before we get into the detail, it’s worth saying that we took about 200 photos today… this post just has a few of the better ones and the ones that help set the scene a bit.
Early-ish start today as we wanted to get to the Pompei site as soon as the doors opened. So, a shower and a bit of brecky and we headed off on the bikes into the Pompei traffic.
This time we sneaked a ride the wrong way up the one way exit from the Marina train station. There was hardly any traffic and we were careful to keep out of anyone’s way. It saved us about 5 minutes and was a toss up whether going the wrong way up a street was more dangerous than braving the main roads we’d been on yesterday.
Once we got to the station we parked the bikes in a much more sensible position than yesterday. Though it’s still amazing that a train station doesn’t have a bike rack.
In case you’ve been living under an historical rock, Pompei is a 63 acre site that was buried in 79 AD by about 3m of ash from a Vesuvius eruption (24th August). There were 20,000 inhabitants at the time and about 1,000 bodies have been found. Like Herculaneum, it seems most people were killed by either thermal shock, or poisonous fumes from the ash. Many would have escaped, but many didn’t. Pompei was a thriving prosperous community before the eruption with many wealthy families living in huge (up to 3,000 m2) properties. Of course there were many more poorer, free and enslaved people looking after them… but there was wealth in Pompei.
We bought the €18 Pompei Express tickets (more on that later) and entered the site.
We got the map pamphlet thing from the info booth and asked about a printed guide. There wasn’t one. The guide is all online. So we downloaded the 134 page pdf and would have to be careful with the battery. This was a bit of a pain ‘cos with Sue’s phone out of action it meant we were sharing my phone for taking some pictures and looking at the guide. Even with Sue’s phone we’d have preferred to have a printed guide so we could stop and refer to it as we went around (yeh I know that’s a eco thing and wasted paper – but we’d have kept the guide).
It is worth saying though that the map thing was really good. You don’t get one by default, you have to ask for it from the info center, but the visit would have been a shadow of what we achieved if we hadn’t had the map. A bit more Italian chaos… the map is great if you know you need to ask for one.
Our plan (that Sue found on a “how to do Pompei” Blog somewhere, was to walk to the far end of the site straight away and walk back to the entrance/exit. This means you’re supposed to get a quieter tour as the other punters haven’t got to the other end yet.
We did consider having a guided tour, but at only 2 hours we didn’t think we’d get to see all we wanted to. Though we’d have probably picked up a lot of tidbits that we didn’t get from the signage and online guide. We discounted the Audioguide as most bloggers said it wasn’t worth it.
Pretty much as soon as we go going to the other end of the site though. We bumped into Dan Snow doing a documentary on Pompei. Of course, Sue asked him what he was up to and he said it was a documentary going out after Christmas on Chammel 5. We later found out that it will be a 4 part doc on life in Pompei before the 79 AD eruption.
Sue also said “we’ll do the tour today and find out the history in January then”. Dan replied “no, you’ll find out more today”! 🤣
Here’s all the pictures we took of the documentary as we bumped into them around the site during the day…
Of course the small theatre was closed for Dan!
These co-presenters were being filmed towards the end of the day. No sign of Dan, but the film crew (two guys) were working them hard doing retakes while the crowds were asked to hold back from walking through the shot.
After Dan we needed some caffeine… actually we knew the eateries were going to fill up so we stopped at the central cafe to hydrate while we could.
Of course Sue had made notes of the top 12 exhibits to see… and she marked them off on the map so we could plan a route. You can’t see all of it in one day, so you’ve got to have a plan if you’re DIY.
The cafe didn’t start serving until at 9:45 though.
And then we headed to the far end of the site, here’s some pictures of the streets as we went, and in the fantastic early light (it also clouded over later).
And so we arrived at the far end and the amphitheater. Here’s some shots inside…
And they were making a big thing of the 1971 Pink Floyd concert played here. There was way too big an exhibition all about it in the tunnels at the base of the amphitheater.
And then we started the long haul back to the entrance. There’s just so much to see. It’s a truly amazing site and our 7+ hours don’t really do it justice.
Here’s “some” pictures as we did the rest of the site.
It’s still amazing how much of the site is unprotected. Site reps are spread around some of the more important buildings asking people not to lean on the walls, but much of the site is unprotected. Even the floors in some buildings are original and yet they allow the 2.5 million yearly visitors to walk on them. Hmm.
The grooves is an example of where us getting a guided tour might have told us where these grooves come from. We’ll need to research this.
The garden of the fugitives is very poignant. I think there were 13 bodies found here. Some looked like they had collapsed, some were huddled. They were all try to escape over the high city walls when they died.
Note: almost all the “bodies” in Pompei are plaster casts of negatives. By which I mean the ash solidified around the bodies and when the bodies decomposed that left a void in the solid ash. When these voids were discovered, plaster was poured in and the ash removed from around them. Most of the display casts seem to be reproductions of the original casts.
And that was our day at Pompei. We’d done over seven and a half hours of poking our heads into buildings, wandering around, and trying not to trip on the rough road surfaces.
We listened in to as many tours as we could on the way around, but given the just one day we had to do the site, I think we made the right choice to DIY. And obviously we had a Sue (TGB) who loved rooting out all the details from the signage and online guide.
By mid afternoon the popular bits were teeming with tours. We didn’t do a couple of things that looked interesting because there were two or three tours queued up waiting. Some parts of the site were still really quiet though and it is possible to get away from the crowds, but obviously only in the less interesting bits.
The one thing we should have done differently was to pay the extra and got a €22 ticket. That would have allowed us to see the exhibits at the end of Zone VI (e.g Villa Dei Misteri). We were blocked from going that far (the only thing we couldn’t see) because we didn’t have a full ticket. Neither of us appreciated that the Express ticket didn’t get us into all the site, but there you have a bit more of Italian chaos!
We also didn’t get to see all the 12 things we wanted to. Some stuff was closed. Pompei is an active archeological site and so as well as maintenance they’re also closing things to enhance the experience and I guess preserve more of it.
And then we headed back to the campsite on the scooter infested roads. We were taking a short cut to get back to the site… down the road that was blocked yesterday… and we could squeeze the bikes through and he pedestrian bit. But two people stopped their cars to shout that the road was closed… “Si, prego”!
Tomorrow looks like it could be wet. So we’ve booked an underground tour of the tunnels under Naples. And then we’ll also see what else we can do around Naples.
We’re a bit worried that our Camping Gaz is going to run out. We had a full bottle (907) when we left home but a shake test feels like there’s not much left. The campsite manager (owner?) has given us a suggested campervan shop to go to – Boutique del Campeggiatore, Portici. We’ll try that on the way out on Friday.
Given the weather is looking a bit crap for the next 3 days, we’ve decided to cut out early and miss Sorrento. It’s a shame, but the scenery won’t look as good in the rain and TBH we’ve had enough of scenic seaside vistas! 🤣
Apple Maps says we have 2,533km until home, going through Avignon. So from Friday we’ll be looking to take some big chunks out of that. And perhaps be home in a week.
Dobby just died! Gets me every time!
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