Day 102...Visiting a brothel - 6th October

Heading got you didn't it? But wait, read on...

Had our inclusive breakky, left our bags with reception and walked to the site of Pompeii! At long last, we are here! I’ve thought about this place for ages, I never thought I’d get here though. We bought a book before we went in, so we knew what we were looking at. (It turned out to be a good idea, as the place is so huge you need to select where you need to go!)

In AD79 the volcano of Mt Vesuvius (Vesuvio) erupted, destroying the town of Pompeii and pushing the coastline out several kilometers. The town was basically buried in ash and pumice, and so is very intact. The volcano is still active, with the last blowout in 1944.

The town of Pompeii literally blew us away. We were expecting scattered ruins like Palatine – but it was like the whole city was still there! A lot of places till had roofs, paintings, jars, pools and statues. It was really eerie and gave us such an amazing insight into an era frozen in time. We saw commercial centers, courts, markets, the tourist strip was full of open cafes, and we saw houses, rich mansions, a stadium – and even a brothel!

We didn’t mean to, but we started at the most wrecked section (and at the time were totally delighted with how intact it all was) and it just kept getting better and better. Winding through these completely intact streets, knowing what devastation was wreaked upon it – and all the time you could see Mt Vesuvius looming over it. It almost seemed to be twiddling its thumbs and whistling, “I didn’t do it. Who me?” hee hee.
First, there was the anfiteatro, which held 20,000. Built around 70 BC, we couldn’t go in but admired the outside. Next door, was an athletics field with a swimming pool in the middle! It was empty, and you could see the slope of the shallow end. It was really very much like our modern day setups.

In the houses at the northeast end was a stately home with a fresco of Venus lounging in a conch shell (Casa della Venere in Conchiglia). We meandered through intact streets with housefronts to a vineyard/rose garden. The streets are paved with big stones, with stepping stones at the intersections in case the streets got flooded with rain. Higher pedestrian walkways were on either side as well. There were also ruts in the street for the carriages. In the garden, there were some body casts of a family with several children. They were frozen in the positions of being smothered and trying to escape. It was really eerie! One was leaning up on his elbow and you could just make out his face. This family, it was real! It existed so long ago, frozen in this disaster – and here we are looking at them! (By the way, body casts are made by pouring into the empty space left by the dead body that was encased in volcanic ash).

Terme Stabiane was a 2nd century bath complex with changing rooms, cold rooms and hot rooms. The methods used to get hot waster and to create steam rooms was astounding! There were some more body casts in here as well – you could see the wrinkle of robe, and the raised part of a sandal. One still had teeth and part of skull which was really spooky. Oh! And the people were really short back then. The casts were quite small, showing how much the human race has gotten taller since then.

The whole way through the town, Nate and I marveled at how close to us everyone was back then. Taps and plumbing, bars and swimming pools. Athletics fields and markets. It was eerie how close to modern life it was. And we also wondered how we got plunged back into the dark ages after these advances! (IE in Britain where they would throw their muck out into the street = got the plague. Pompeii had a drainage system and some places had taps and a form of plumbing).

To get to the Terme Stabiane baths we had to go through the tourist section. The street was our favorite section as we could really see it come to life. Pompeii was a busy port, and this street was full of practically intact cafes, hotels (one was two storeys), bars and houses. You could wander in some of them and stand behind the tiled bar, which had tiled benches with deep potholes to hold beer and wine. We pretended to serve people. Some bars still had frescoes and murals. A lot of the street – the buildings still had writing on them, and they buildings themselves still had roofs.

The houses really inspired us. When I build my own home I’d like it to be influenced by Pompeii. The houses were square, with interlinking rooms. There was a central square, which was the garden courtyard with a fountain or pool. When you walked through the front doors, you saw this lovely big garden, then could circle around the outside of it which was the house. Very stylish.

The town had two theatres, a larger and a smaller one. One was ore for plays and poems than the bigger one. The Grand Theatre (grande teatre) one used to have a ‘backboard’ two storeys high, with statues in the niches. The Grande Teatre seated 5000 and had the gladiators barracks behind, surrounded by a portico of about 70 columns.

We had done a lot of walking, so grabbed a quick lunch among the ruins. I was thoroughly amused by Nathan getting annoyed from a dog begging for his lunch. So cute! Then we went towards the Port Marina section. It was the towns port, but is now inland due to the Vesuvius eruption. Located here, were the city law courts and exchange. Next door were the markets. You could see the slotted sections for each stall, and inside was a huge area for the fish market. The massive bowl in the middle was used to clean the fish. Archeologists have found fish bones in the toilets and drains of Pompeii.
Dotted amongst the town were various temples – for Isis, Venus, Apollo etc. They were nice, some in condition, but they didn’t hold us as captivated as the houses and commercial buildings. It really felt like an everyday town when you saw those. The streets were paved as if yesterday.

Our most favourite part? Guess! It was…the brothel! Still fully intact, and 2 storeys tall. We were only allowed on the first floor. There were a series of rooms with beds of stone (they would have been heaped with straw mattresses and fur back in the day though). A toilet sat at the end of the rows. The best bit however, was the assorted murals all over the walls that advertised the different services on offer! Of course I sat on the bed and hammed it up, pretending to be a tart.

The whole day our imaginations went wild. We envisioned large pots of wine and beer, horses, people clattering down busy streets, market stalls, roast pig on the fire, street urchins – the lot! We had planned to be only a few hours based on previous ruin experience – but ended up nearly the whole day. We left around 3pm, grabbed the car and raced for the Amalfi coast.

Sorrento ended up being a quick drive through as it was quite poxy. The rest of the coast? Well, the coast itself was beautiful but you could see that the towns kicked off in the 60’s onwards. Everything looked pretty dated, but not cute historical dated. It wasn’t a relaxing drive either. Tight winding curves with the continual surprise of an Italian taking up your lane while driving at you from the opposite direction! It was really annoying! We drove through a few towns (asking at a couple for rooms, but they were either booked out or out of our league). We decided to stay at the cutest town we found, which was getting close to the end of the drive. We only discovered the next day that it was Amalfi itself!

After some negotiations and a few choices of rooms, we got a double with bathroom for 70 euro. But it was cheaper than the other rooms, and was the only one with a sea view! Very charming too. We showered and went out (by then it was early evening) and watched a big fat moon glow over the bay. Picking a restaurant on the water, we got stuck into the wine and olives and pasta. Very enjoyable. Just before getting into bed, a big array of fireworks went off from the jetty under our window.