Is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?

Sorry for the Frank Zappa non-sequitur. I just want to start off by saying that I'm a good driver. I put a lot of effort into it, take a lot of pride in it, and have a basically spotless record to show for it. I've even driven in Manhattan plenty, but there's only so much you can do to prepare for driving in Rome. If I could never do that again, I'd be very happy.

Today was yet another busy day, with a visit to Pomeii and then on to Sorrento on the dividing line between Amalfi and the Bay of Naples. But to make any of that happen, we needed a car. So I went to the train terminal, creatively named Termini, to pick it up. This seemed like a good idea, because it was close to the hotel. Pretty nightmarish though. Termini is huge and because the Italians clearly fear anything being orderly, they prefer to not have maps anywhere that they might be useful. So it took me a while to find the rental car office. The transaction didn't take long, but the car was just parked outside somewhere. Or was it? It was hard to tell. The clerk said to just press the button and listen for the beep, but this car didn't beep. I eventually found it using the license plate. Not quite like Hertz Gold Canopy service, if you know what I mean.

The car, at least, was a nice one- a Volvo with a good-sized trunk and an impossibly complicated information center that occasionally beeped or spoke to us in Italian. But we were already late by the time I got the thing, so Ronnie just threw all my unpacked stuff into bags and checked out while I slowly made my way back to the hotel- 8 blocks in 20 minutes.

Once in the car, we had to get out of town. Awful. Poor Celia was terrified. The Italians in general and the Romans in particular seem to make every encounter between cars or cars and pedestrians like when dogs sniff each other to determine dominance, seeing if the other one will roll over onto its back. If you hesitate or show any fear you're toast, and there are motorcycles and scooters buzzing around you on both sides at any moment with no notice except for the "bzzzzzzzz." All told, it took another 20 minutes to get far enough away from the center of town to not be desperately trying not to hit another car or a person and then all it took was a U-turn on a 6 lane road (legal, mind you and suggested by Google Maps) to get on the highway.

Finally underway, we headed to Pompeii. Finally got there 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet our guide and we hadn't eaten lunch yet so she had to wait for us. Ultimately, this turned out not to be a problem. She stayed with us long enough to make it a full and rewarding visit. And Pompeii as a place to visit is oh my god.

There aren't that many things that you hear about when you're a kid that stick with you the way Pompeii stuck with me. The terror and random tragedy of it really struck me even when I was little. It was the most frightening thing I could imagine.

What remains of the town is a ruin, of course. We started with a look at a small Greek theater with perfect acoustics, much to the delight of the cruise passenger from the group behind who sang "Fly Me To The Moon."

From there we started learning about life there. We saw pots that were kind of like steam table food for snack bars. We looked at the roads and saw grooves from the wheels of chariots, and we saw crosswalks, raised above the pavement because Pompeii had no sewers and walking down there was chancy.

Pompeii is a familiar enough story that I won't re-tell it, but until you start walking around the place it's hard to get a sense for what it feels like. This is not your monuments or scattered ruins. This is an entire, decent sized town, 15,000 people or so, poisoned by gases and then buried in ashes 20-30 feet deep. And most of the town plan is still there, rows and rows of house and shops, public spaces and brothels and baths and temples. You can almost feel a living town there. I found it incredibly moving. 

I know that most of the so-called treasures were looted out, either by robbers (though we saw the skeletons of a few who came to loot the town before the poison gas had cleared) or by the government. By all accounts, all the best artifacts are in the Naples museum. Maybe another time, but you can see artifacts in museums almost anywhere. This was a real place with normal people doing normal things with real stuff.

We saw a beautifully appointed house, with great decorative elements and style. A real rich person's villa. We also saw a public bath (the rich house had its own bath and sauna) and market. Real stuff also includes a red light district, where the "menu" is illustrated with frescos, some of which remain.

We were wiped out by the touring, but I found it pretty thrilling. As Ronnie said, so now I can say to people, "Awesome? You mean Pompeii awesome or 50% off online awesome?

I'm just going to upload all the photos later. It would take too long to describe them all. Just go there if you have a chance. I try to to keep myself open to being amazed, but it doesn't actually happen that often. It did today though. I'll never forget it.