The "Discovering the Streets of Pompeii" Story

It was an ordinary day. We boarded the bus about 3 hours ago and are almost at Pompeii now. Yep, that Pompeii. The one in Italy. It is one of or final days in Italy and our guide, Mary Lou B. had made arrangements for us to travel from Rome to see the historical city of Pompeii. Pompeii is a ruined and partially buried Roman city near Naples. It was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning two days in 79 AD. The city was buried under about 70 feet of ash and pumice, and it was lost for nearly 1,600 years before its accidental rediscovery in 1592. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire. Today, over 2,500,000 tourists visit it annually and the street vendors try to sell to every one of them. We have a guide for the tour, but since there are about 30 of us, it is hard at time to hear all the details about the destruction and discovery of Pompeii. We start with a walk that displays Mt. Vesuvius in the background. A constant reminder of what caused all the damage. Naturally, everyone has to have a souvenir photo from that Kodak location. As we follow our guide we see that this city, even though it is still in ruins, still has a population of feral cats and homeless dogs. I stop to feed one of the dogs part of a snack I brought along. We stop to see the sizes of the old houses which display brass house numbers as they did before the destruction. The Streets of Pompeii were paved during Roman times with large polygonal blocks of stone. They are bordered by curbs and pedestrian walkways. On most streets there are raised stones at regular intervals that pedestrians used to cross the streets when water flooded them. The sculptures and frescoes that have been restored are beautiful with soft tones and colors. Quite a few erotic frescoes have been uncovered and many houses had stone carvings in the walk in from the house of the male phallus. We were told that signified that the house was blessed with children. As you stand and take in the entire city, it is truly amazing that the country was able to excavate this city to the way it used to be. Our trip ended with a three course meal outside the city walls. I don't remember much about the meal except that it included large quantities of local wine and big plates of spaghetti. Hey, now I can hardly wait to get home to Lancaster and carve three big penises in my driveway. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - pixs from top are: Carol and LDub in Pompeii with the volcano in the background, stone street with LDub feeding a stray, restored theatre, frescoes on the wall with restored sculpture, stone carving indicating a fertile home and Carol with her waiter getting ready for course #2, the pasta.