Today we took the kids to school as usual, but since it is a US holiday Dan was off work. So we decided to do an adults-only sightseeing day and went down to Pompei.
The ruins are absolutely incredible. The small city is enormous and could take days to see it all - supposedly it takes an hour to walk the length of the city! We rented an audio guide so we could get a good understanding of what we were seeing, otherwise you just seem to be looking at one ruined building after another. Seeing the town as it was in the 2nd century B.C. to 79 AD, when Vesuvius erupted and covered the city, was amazing.
The society was very organized and many of the tools used during that time (wood fired ovens, sundials to tell time, the innovation of the calendar to the lunar phases) are still in use by the modern world today. Seeing the casts made of the victims was very interesting - they were literally "frozen in time" at the time of the eruption and you can see how many were trying to escape the ashes as they fell upon this town.
The "Villa Dei Misteri" (House of the mysteries) was very beautiful as well. It is a large villa with many frescoes still intact and it was amazing to see the colors still bright after so much time has passed. Even neater is that this villa is on the outskirts of Pompei and almost surrounding it are modern houses where people currently live. Imagine waking up each day and having this famous sight right outside your window!
To see more of our Pompei pictures: Click here
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