At the top of Lara’s bucket list items on this trip was, No 1, anything related to Harry Potter and No 2 Pompeii. Why? She was fascinated by the history behind the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and in particular, wanted to see the man that was caught sitting on the toilet at the time.

About three hours drive south of Rome on the west coast of Italy is where we wanted to go and see this splendid ruin of a Roman city dating back to the 7th century BC. We took the direct train to Rome airport to collect our hire car and we were off to tackle the mad drivers to get on our way to Pompeii.

The village of Pompei (not a spelling error) lies next to the ruined city of Pompeii (two i’s). We had booked an AirBnB within walking distance of the town center. We arrived late afternoon and decided to walk into the town to explore and have a bite to eat.

In typical and quintessential Italian and maybe European style the centre of the town features a large and very beautiful church, sitting in a town square with water features and is the center of attention to the township and its visitors.

Little Ashton has become nuts about wanting to go into churches for a look and see. With respect to the churches we have visited, he even knows that he must be absolutely quiet when he goes inside. He even holds his lips together as he goes around looking inside. He loves for me to light a candle, we did this several times and thought of those no longer with us.

We were given a recommendation by the villa owners to try a restaurant which we did. Kristi was in heaven gnocchi just the way she likes it. We had a great dinner outside, pizza, pasta, beer, and wine. We found out we had to pay Euro 2 each just to sit outside, including the boys but what the heck, we were in a really nice place.

The buried city of Pompeii

We were told to allow 3 to 4 hours to visit the buried city. We thought with the boys we would last maybe 3 at best……….. Almost 6 hours later we were still walking around in awe of this wonderful place.

I had no real idea what to expect and have learnt during these travels to make sure that we have either done our homework or have some sort of reference to what we were seeing. Kristi came up with an awesome, cost effective plan that anyone visiting somewhere like this needs to check out. Download the Rick Steves tour of Pompeii podcast. We made sure the three of us had the podcast on our phones, plugged in our headphones and listened to how history was made, street by street. It was awesome.

As Rick takes you through this fascinating city you can really get a great idea of how clever and ahead of their time the Romans actually were.

Before you go through the main gate and up into the main city market square you are able to get a glimpse of the type of thing you are going to see, corpses, everywhere.

• 

• 

• 

The people of the city were one minute going about their business, shopping, eating, socializing, the very next minute they were almost entombed in volcanic ash that fell as deep as 7 meters. The way the bodies lay on display is actually exactly how they were found. The ash formed around the features of the human body and hardened. The inside of the body obviously decomposed and scientists were able to pour in a plaster cast to then keep the original look, size and even expression left when this terrible act of nature happened. It was haunting to see at first and later, you will see on our tour, it was almost soul destroyingly sad.

The streets were cleaned, every day. Washed down with gallons of water fed from a reservoir in the mountains somewhere and spread throughout the city in lead pipes, just like not so long ago, before we changed to copper or plastic.

The stones above were not obvious until pointed out. They are an early road crossing to assist in crossing the street while the water is running down the road, cleaning. Clever these Romans.

Water was on full supply to the city, the lower down the food chain you were the more likely you were cut off when water became in short supply.

You can see here that the chariots used created tracks in the stone floor over time. There must have been a height of activity by chariots, these tracks were everywhere. Again, you can see more firsts in the world here, sidewalks were all over the city.

This was a city providing full social needs exactly as it would today. The public toilets were a large room where the person would do their business over a hole. Inside the hole would be running water to take it all away. The man above allegedly was caught in the middle of his business. No wonder he didn’t feel like running away, just praying by the looks of things. Lara had seen her man on the toilet.

The main market square was huge and was the centre of the city and where everything happened each day, trading of goods became the natural cource of income for the locals.

Even the traffic flow was restricted as it is today, the sign below meant pedestrian only. Others with a chariot obviously meant all traffic permitted.

The modern social similaritises continued, here below is the local pub floor.

Here we find one of several bakeries in the city, complete with kiln oven and wheat grinding devices.

• 

• 

The city even had a brothel. They say this is the oldest form of woman trade. Each room had a different “way”. The menu was in the entrance way and apparently, this place was documented doing a roaring trade. This was a bit awkward with Lara but provided a great opportunity to talk about the modern day sex-trade, which is something our family is really passionate about.

• 

• 

We were seeing a modern day city from almost 2,100 years ago. Market places, food stalls, churches and even the entertainment complex, the arenas, not one, but three. Two sizable outdoor amphitheaters and one huge colosseum type arena where fighting and hunting would take place. The last performance here was actually a performance by Deep Purple in 1972, to an audience of zero!! The performance was part of a documentary on the rock band.

• 

• 

• 

The social lines were also there as they are today. The rich living in areas where rich people live. We witnessed their houses, almost all complete, the lush and very expensive and intimate decorative walls. The one below is to recognize the balancing act of being rich yet still being fertile, enough said.

Floors were lavishly decorated and even included shining stones for cats eyes in the dark. You have to hand it to the Romans.

• 

• 

• 

We had a ton of fun learning everything we could about Pompeii. We thoroughly recommend if you are in Rome you make the effort to take a trip here.

• 

• 

Towards the end of the tour we witnessed probably the saddest sight you could imagine, There is a green area, full of poppy flowers. Very fitting for the sight we saw. A complete family trapped in the fields during the explosion and in remembrance of them, they are kept there to lay by the poppies for all to see and share their pain. It was extremely moving.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We ended our day back at the villa by about 4pm. We decided to let the boys play with the owner‘s kids outside. While we were watching them the owner’s father came out holding a water melon, a lemon and a bottle of Limoncello. He gestured with the bottle, said something in Italian and proceeded to pour three glasses. We had an awesome time talking to Franco, him in Italian, us in English. We spent about an hour and a half gesturing, guessing and using google translate. We found out he, like the two of us, also worked for IVECO trucks. We also found out tips to go to the next day, we were off to the Amalfi Coast and his number 1 recommendation was Positano, see next blog coming very soon.

As we said, if you are traveling to Rome, make sure you at least take a day trip to the fabulous and very interesting ruins of Pompeii, as we say in New Zealand, it was bloody awesome mate!

You can see more great pictures in our gallery, click here.