August 30
We caught the train today to Naples, and then another train to Pompeii to see the town of ash.
An earthquake set off Mt. Vesuvius and not long after the town of Pompeii was covered in Ash and pretty much forgetten about from 79 A.D until the early 1700's.
The site has been excavated a couple of times, and it wasn't until early in the 1900's that real progress was made on the town, and pretty much the whole city was uncovered instead of just the parts they expected to find riches.
The site pretty much just looked like the other Roman ruins we had seen, however much better preserved and you could walk down the streets just as people had many centuries ago...the part that really brought home the atrocity of what happened, was when we walked past a glass enclosure that housed the bodies of some women, men and children that had been trying to escape but were mummified by the ash. Would have been so scary!
Some of the walls are that well preserved that you can still see the paintings, and the floors have mosiacs still on them.
Was a very somber place to be, and i def say thanks that i was not there then, and that it never happens again! or that if something similar does happen, that the person in charge of the country at the time, doesn't just leave the town to rot like the man did back then!
