Pompeii/Vesuvius

Note: If you're reading this post for the sole purpose of hearing about Vesuvius... don't waste your time. We didn't make it there.




Pompeii
I visited Pompeii with the EF Tours group I traveled with during my second year of high school. The only distinct memory I have of Pompeii during that trip, was the tour guide joking that he and I were married, and that this was our humble abode. Italians can be pretty creepy. Or I'm easily creeped out. Anyway, moving along...

Pompeii is gigantic! I'm sure that most of you realize and know this, but I didn't. I elected to have a tour guide show me around the grounds, and she informed us that it would take four or five days to cover the great expanse of Pompeii. Rather than spend five days there, we only spent a few hours!

One unique site that definitely sticks out in my memory was the brothel. Yes, I said brothel. There was a menu of sorts up on the walls depicting the various services that a man could pay for. There were maybe 5 little rooms on the first floor, each with a large (the size of a twin bed, maybe) stone slab that constituted as a bed. There was a large crowd waiting to pass through there, and our tour guide had to go argue with the other tour guides to let us pass through. If we had been without a tour guide, I don't think that we would've made it through!



It was also interesting to see the bodies which had been perfectly preserved due to the eruption of Vesuvius. There were several bodies in contorted positions, as well as the body of a pregnant woman, and the body of a dog!





Sadly, we were unable to visit Vesuvius that day. It's considered a national park, and the national park was closed that day, due to unforeseen weather conditions. Boo.