Time for the second half of my Campania trip! Where did we leave off? Monday? Monday!
So, Tuesday! We went to Benevento, where we saw a really cool church with a lot of weird angles and arches and such, called the Church of S. Sofia. We also saw an arch of Trajan, but the rain added to the hour or so we spent just standing in front of it kind of took away from the general excitement...
After a rainy lunch we drove on to Sepino for an autoptic. I must say, the two dogs mating while I was trying to figure out how a tomb showed a man's power was quite distracting.
Wednesday! Wednesday was kind of a fail of a day. We said goodbye to the Villa Vergiliana and drove to Pozzuoli. After seeing the macellum (or rather, the kittens by the macellum) we were supposed to go into the amphitheater and see the tunnels underneath, but we weren't allowed inside. After this, we were supposed to go climb a volcano. But there were too many children/tour groups there, and the professors inexplicably decided that this was a good reason not to go, and to rather give us about 5 hours of free time in Naples. If you read the last post, you know I did not really enjoy Naples the first time around. So this made me sad. One good thing Naples does have to offer is the Archeological Museum, which has many wall paintings from Pompeii and interesting sculptures from Rome.
That night we stayed at the Motel Villa Dei Misteri, where the food, unfortunately, could not measure up to the food at the Villa Vergiliana. But really, could anyone?
Thursday was Pompeii day! We spent about 10 hours there, so instead of talking about it, I will just post some pictures.
Awesome body casts of people suffocating in the ashes
Villa of the Mysteries
Pompeian street
Brothel, of course
Amphitheater
Just to explain the blog title- there were SO MANY FRENCH PEOPLE in Pompeii. And everywhere else, for that matter, but Pompeii especially. So much so that the cashiers in the snack bar were speaking french. It was culture week in Italy, meaning everything ancient was free, basically. Free=french, apparently? Anyways, end rant...
Friday morning we all woke up, took Advil for our feet (Pompeii was painful!) and went to Herculaneum. We spent most of the time there doing autoptics on different houses, which was cool. Many of them still had the 2nd story, which was something we hadn't really seen before.
We had lunch at a pasta factory, and then got to go on a tour. The tour itself was cool, but by far the best part was the coat and shower-cap type things they had us put on to go inside. Everyone looked like a lunch lady, in the most unflattering way possible.
After that fun, albeit random, tour, we visited the Villa in Oplontis, another area affected by Vesuvius. It was fun walking around a mostly intact villa and getting a better idea of what they would have been like in ancient times, wall paintings and all.
Saturday was pretty laid back, as it was our last day of the trip. We started the morning by seeing the mithraeum and amphitheater at Boscoreale. We finally got to go underneath the amphitheater! Cool stuff.
the secretive under-tunnels of the amphitheater
In the afternoon we went on a tour of a Bourbon palace in Caserta. Since there was really nothing ancient in there, apart from one statue, no one really listened, including the professors. I did make note, however, of how many rooms in that palace had nothing in them but chairs. Who could possibly need that many uncomfortable chairs? Rich people... After the tour we had some time to walk around the giant gardens in the back, so my friend and I strolled around speaking in British accents and pretending we are the rich ladies who live in this palace, our 'early autumn home'. Yeah. We're normal.
We got back to Rome for dinner that night, and to celebrate Rome's birthday, I went to sleep early. I know, livin' large.
Well, that's Campania done. At some point I'll write about last week... it wasn't terribly exciting, but (spoiler alert) I did go to a soccer game!
No comments:
Post a Comment