Ercolano - Mt. Vesuvius and Herculaneum

Got out reasonably early today and went to the top of the crater of Vesuvius. This isn't much of a climb, as the bus takes you most of the way up. Unfortunately, we found ourselves in a cloud when we first got there, though the mist swirling around the crater was kind of cool looking. After a while though, most of the cloud blew over and we were rewarded with views of the sea and the city of Ercolano. Visibility was unfortunately still kind of low due to pollution and water vapor in the air. We still couldn't see the horizon.

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From Naples

From Naples

After we got back off the volcano, we went out to lunch at a nice little pizzeria, where we got to see the wood-fired pizza oven in action.

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When we arrived at Herculaneum, we found ourselves buying tickets at the same time as a school group from the USA. Somehow whoever did the planning for that failed to realize the student and child prices for things in Italy only apply to EU citizens. Which seems logical enough to me when you are talking about the tickets for university students in the 18-24 age bracket, but like a seriously lame policy for the younger kids (these were 15). You have to pay the whole 11 Euro entry fee for an (non-EU citizen) infant for crying out loud. That's insane.

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Anyhow, we arrived in the early afternoon and it was bright, hot, and surprisingly busy. And we had the after lunch sleepies. We decided to give the audio tour a try as there were basically no signs, but it turned out to be quite a disappointing audio tour. You know how much slower it is to listen to something read allowed compared to reading it for yourself? Now imagine the reader is reading for an international audience and therefore speaking extra slowly. And with long pauses between stuff in case you can't find the pause button for yourself. The content was otherwise fine, but Mary just didn't have the patience for it. Josh listened to most of it.

After a while the tour groups departed, the after lunch sleepies wore off, the air started to cool off, and everything got better. Poking into the old buildings was really fantastic. It was great to see the frescoes in situ, and there were some great mosaic floors, and a couple really fantastic wall mosaics. As it got to be evening, the whole area took on a wonderful romantic feeling.

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From Naples

From Naples

Something new we learned about Roman buildings (well, at least in Herculaneum), was the cleaver way they collected water for their underground cisterns. In the entry area there would be a little square pool, which was connected to the underground cistern. The pool and cistern were filled by a square opening in the roof directly above that let in rainwater and light. The roof sloped inward from the sides of the house, so they were collecting water from the whole roof area. Cool! I totally want one of those in my house... though of course it doesn't make sense in the climate of the Pacific Northwest.

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