A Girl Went Back to Napoli – (Naples/Pompeii 04/13/2011

The last time I was scheduled to stop in Naples the water was too rough and the port itself closed long before we could get there. That was this past fall – I didn’t expect to get another chance so soon – but when you’re a crewmember working a World Cruise, you get a lot more opportunities.

The morning dawned bright and clear, though not particularly warm, and – after a mad dash around the parking lot to locate the bus – I joined my fellow crew members at 9am to take the 20 minute (mostly uneventful) drive through Naples to Pompeii.

When you learn about Pompeii you hardly comprehend how big it is. It’s easy to forget that it was a city, an entire city, that simply stopped – stopped in 24 hours. My mother went to Pompeii in the 70s, and has always told me that the most eerie thing about it is that it seemed so normal. The moms were moms, the dad’s went off to work every morning, the kids played in the streets, and then suddenly there was chaos and panic and then …nothing.

Eerie is a good word for Pompeii, you wander the streets almost expecting someone to turn the corner in surprise, wagon tracks still dent the roads between the raised steps of the public crossroads (the roman citizens didn’t have sewers…fill in the blanks as to why the crosswalks are made of stones that stand a good foot above the street), and there are frescos that are as bright as the day they were painted.

For those wondering: yes, the brothel frescos are still intact. Yes, the rather – interesting – street markers pointing to the residence of the ladies of the evening are still embedded on the road. I would normally post pictures of them, but I never know when kids are going to stumble onto these pages….

The most disturbing part of the whole city is the people. Yes, there are still people there. What’s left of them. When the volcano erupted, they couldn’t get away, so they curled up, tried to find protection, and ultimately were trapped. When the archeologists doing the excavation discovered that there were airpockets in the ash layer burying the city, they poured plaster into them, and when the plaster casts dried – they found that they had reproduced pots, pans, plants and…people. People captured in their final moments, people as they were buried before “worms became their chambermaids”…with arms flung in front of faces, hands cupped over noses…

The guides say that they’re “reproductions”, but they’re reproductions only in the sense that they are not complete – everything but the skeletons is plaster. But they were people once…

If you look closely, you can see the tips of their fingers through the plaster…

Sigh

Thousands of people still live on the foot of Mt Vesuvius, despite the fact that it is still a known active volcano. They have divided the residential area at its base into three risk areas, with red being both the most populated and the most dangerous. The idea being that they’ll be able to evacuate when – not if – the next eruption occurs.

I had planned to take the hydrofoil over to Iskia later this afternoon, but as we were leaving Pompeii, the skies opened up and the chilly rain came down. So the rest of the day was spent in my cabin thawing out….

But since I was in Italy, I had a least one piece of pizza – not the best I’ve ever had oddly – and took way too many photographs…

And lo, onto the next…