After Rome, we continued our trek down the boot of Italy. Next stop was
Naples, which is
really no more than a big, dirty, sprawling city. The central areas of
which you really don't
want to be walking around in at night. But after a bit of trouble finding
a hostel, we were
able to find a place in a relatively nice, quiet neighborhood (with an
awesome pizza place
nearby).
As nasty as Naples was, it had some very cool things not so far away.
Namely Pompei
and Mt. Vesuvius.
Quite a cool place, Pompei. We thought we could
burn through it in a couple of
hours, but once we saw how huge it was, we devoted the entire day to exploring
it.
A
good portion of it is reconstructed. Like those columns there.
But
alot of it is just as it was when they unearthed it.
It's crazy to think how far the ash flew from the
volcano. It's pretty far away.
Pompei
was evidently a ritzy town, back in the day. Lots of wealthy people
lived and vacationed there.
You
could hire a personal tour guide to take you through the ruins, and from
what
we heard alot of them sounded like they were making shit up. We joked
that we
should trick some poor schlep into letting us guide them around as we
made up
useless information.
"Yes, this is the famous Fountain of Ariadne.
She was a nypho who was
being courted by the god Zeus. When she refused his advances and
threatened to tell his wife, Helen of Troy, Zeus turned her into a fountain
and put a spigot in her mouth to shut her up..."
Apparently
flooding was a problem here. Or like most other filthy
Europeans, they used to throw garbage and feces in the streets.
Pompei
also has a very well-preserved colesium. Well-preserved if you ignore
the grass growing in the seats and all that.
Carl
and Space Monkey square off in mortal combat as an massive crowd of at
least 2 dozen people cheer and call for blood.
(Carl
got knocked out of competition pretty quickly)
A
shot of the tunnels within the arena.
Faith
prepares for combat at the gladiator's entrance.
One
can see the modern city of Pompei behind the ancient one here.
