The People

As in Rome, folks in Sorrento were mostly friendly (with one glaring exception, which we'll discuss in a little while). Sorrento is a total tourist town, so most shopkeepers treat you well. The towns on the Amalfi Coast, on the southern side of the peninsula, are a curious mix, though. Though tourisim is the largest business here, these are small coastal towns, so while folks are generally friendly, these are also working towns where folks live their daily lives.

Around Sorrento, The Amalfi Coast, & Pompeii

We managed to squeeze in a few hours in Pompeii in-between our trip from Sorrento up to Florence. Luggage in hand, we prepared to brave the miles and miles of rock-paved roads, only to be told we had to leave our suitcases behind at the baggage check, which actually turned out for the best. The paved roads of Pompeii are notoriously uneven, and would have thrashed our poor little rolling luggage beyond repair.

The first thing you notice about Pompeii is the sheer size of it. These ruins are not just a few crumbling buildings, but the remains of an entire, once-prosperous town. We had about three hours here, and that was just enough time to walk to the northeastern end, where the Villa dei Misteri lies with some of Pompeii's best-preserved frescoes, and then from there to the Eastern end, where the stadium sits, and then back to the entrance to catch our train.

The circumvesuviana stops literally right in front of the entrance, but there are actually two stops in Pompei, depending on which train line you are on, so make sure you take the one that goes to Pompeii Scavo, literally the Pompeii Digs.

The entrance fee is modest, and does not include the cost of the audio tour, which, although hard to follow from number to number at times, is recommended to give you a sense of what you're seeing amongst all these ruins. A guided tour would be even better, if you have the time. If possible, plan at least half a day here.

As you enter the town, you'll see that most of the buildings are in total ruin, but closer inspection will show you a number of interesting details, Many buildings still have partial floors intact, showing the mosaic inlays that were used in Pompeii before the city was destroyed. Some plazas and temples still have statues and pillars standing, though it's a challange to the imagination to try to picture what everything looked like before the volcanic eruption.

Many of the buildings appear to be shopfronts, with counters that have three or four bowls insetin the marble countertops. We're not sure what these were for, but the streetfront counters bore a striking resemblance to some of the small pizza places we found later in Venice, giving us a sense of connection to the daily lives of these folks who lived so many years ago.

Perhaps, like us, they wandered down to the local bar or restaurant, hanging around at the counter, sampling the day's foods, bantering with the owner about the weather or the state of the city.

In any case, there is so much here to explore. The city had a public waterworks, as evidenced by the public fountains (some once again working) at most of the major intersections. Citizens probably walked on the sidewalks, 8 inches to a foot above the stone-paved streets where the carts and horses transported goods across the city.

In some places you can actually see the wagon wheel ruts worn into the stone roads; and at each intersection and at various places along the roads, taller stones are placed for pedestrians to cross from sidewalk to sidewalk without stepping down into the muck of te street, while the spacing of the stones allowed for the passage of wagon wheels.

On one edge of the city, on the way to the Villa de Misteri, is the Way of the Tombs (Via delle Tombe); here you can see many tombs of the wealthier citizens of Pompeii, as well as the remnants of what was once a wall of arches or maybe one of the aueducts ancient Rome is famed for.

The Villa itself is one of the best preserved buildings in the city. It sat on the edge of town, a little below the level of the city proper on the far side from Mount Vesuvius, and this appears to have helped to protect the structure from the worst of the volcanic damage.

There are many rooms to wander through, and the audio tour provides voluminous information on the house, originally the home of one of the wealthier families in Pompeii. One of the rooms here houses a fantastic fresco, which covers three walls and is still mostly intact. If you come to Pompeii, this is a must-see part of the city.

On the far side of town is one of the best-preserved of the ancient Roman stadiums. The structure itself is almost entirely intact - the exception being some of the seating inside that has succumbed to Mother Nature.

The stadium is an oval shape, and is impressive as you approach it, set aside from the rest of the town so you can see the whole of it without obstruction.

From the west side, you can actually enter the main floor of the Stadium itself, and see what it might have looked like in its prime. The bowl is large, though smaller than the Colisseum in Rome, and shorter.

Next to the stadium is a large field surrounded by a beautiful collonade that was used for sporting events.

The excavation of Pompeii continues to this day - we saw an active dig sponsored by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and several other spots marked for exploration, as well as a central business district that's being painstakingly restored, brick by brick, from the rubble.

We look forward to returning in a few years to see the progress that has been made in this endeavor.

Pompeii is also haunting. Turning to look over our shoulders in one of the larger plazas, we could see Mount Vesuvius hovering sinisterly in the mists above the ciyt, and we couldn't help but wonder if it might happen again; if the mountain might once again explode unexpectedly into a hail of hot ash and rock over this resurrected city. And if it might just be today,

In the middle of the city there's a collection spot where archeologists have stored pottery and other artifacts from the digs. Here too are several casts of human bodies that were buried in the eruption and then burned away; the casts too are haunting, revealing the dying poses of people, like us, who died so unexpectedly in the eruption.

Unlike the "statues" we saw in Rome - street entertainers mimicing stone - these statues were real souls whose lives were cut short. Some are hudled in fetal positions; others are laid out on the ground as if they were struck and fell in their tracks as they died.

Though rough hewn as if by an impressionistic sculptor, still you can see the agony in the poses that you can't read in the faces of these people,

It is these little details, even more than the huge, empty streets, that bring home the scope of the tragedy that befell this lost city, and that remind us how fragile life really is.