Yesterday’s stop on our European tour was in Naples, Italy. A very crowded city it’s built into a mountain and when looking at it from the docks you can see how, the higher up the mountain the houses were, the nicer they were. The middle levels looked OK and the lower levels appeared to be the slums. But we didn’t get to spend much time in Naples. My tour for the day was to go to the ruins at Pompeii.
I don’t know if it’s just me but I can’t describe how depressing the whole place is. To imagine that one minute you’re just going about your normal routine and the next your entire world is obliterated. It again makes me thankful that I live in Florida, where our natural disasters are tornadoes and hurricanes… Things you generally know are coming ahead of time. But the ruins are really incredible and surprisingly accessible. For stuff that’s thousands of years old, for the most part, you can go right up and touch the marble columns. In one instance, a stray dog went right up on one of the altars and looked out over all of the tourists as if he was the priest. That was another depressing thing about Pompeii. One of the people in our tour inquired as to why there were so many stray dogs in the ruins (I saw 3)… Apparently people in the neighboring areas, when they’re tired of their dog, can’t take care of it, or are just going on vacation and can’t take it with them, they’ll just leave them at the entrance to the park figuring that the tourists will feed them. One poor guy laying in one of the ruins’ storefronts looked really sick. Just added to the depressing atmosphere.
Once I have a better Internet connection, I’ll post the pictures from yesterday (I think the last day I got up was from Sunday in Barcelona, so hopefully I’ll post the rest soon). One of the plaster casts, they say, was of a guy who knew he was done for and just curled into a ball and cried and that’s how he was frozen forever. Another thing that added to it, don’t know if it’s depressing, but my brother went to the top of Mt. Vesuvius and, in their tour, they were told that the cap of the mountain has hardened to a point that if Vesuvius were to erupt again it would blow out the side instead of up similar to Mt. St. Helen’s in Washington. Should this happen, the neighboring towns would have between 30 seconds and 3 minutes to evacuate… In other words, they’re all dead. Very uplifting.
While outside the ruins we stopped off at this little tourist-y area that had a local specialty called limonciello (sp?). It’s a liqueur made out of lemons and they were giving out free samples. Expecting the equivalent of a lemon Italian ice it was more akin to milk mixed with lemonade and was absolutely disgusting. Blech! That’s what you get for testing the local flavor. Back to the McDonald’s like in Rome. :)
Day 8 – At Sea
Well, as for today, it’s another full day crossing the sea as we head from Naples to Santorini, Greece. Since leaving the port in Naples the seas have been really rough. Luckily, I guess being an old-hat when it comes to roller coasters and such, the bouncing of the ship hasn’t bothered me much. But I can tell it’s bothering my mom and grandparents. And not really much of anything to do today and the boat’s so crowded that I can’t find a quiet spot. It sucks. Oh well… Have a great weekend and tomorrow I’ll be writing from Greece. Ciao!
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