Re: More Central and Eastern European bling (incl Transylvania); *A flights, Acco...
Have I mentioned before that I loathe tour groups? Hate coming across them on location (loud, pushy and in-the-way) and hate being part of one (much the same reasons). We debated strongly whether to go in a tour group for our day at Pompeii and Vesuvius and decided, mutually reluctantly, to do so, mainly for logistical reasons.
Unfortunately the day was extremely disappointing and frustrating and only reinforced all my predjudices against tour groups. In retrospect we should have just hired a car from Naples. There were 2 tours, one morning (Pompeii) and one afternoon (Vesuvius) both booked through Cit Travel in Australia, but ultimately supplied by Seduction Tours out of Naples / Amalfi.
The day started well when the bus turned up at the hotel bang on time, and we then would around Naples picking up other pax at other hotels. Then the guide and the drivers phones started going off and we kept stopping at strange places (not hotels, which were all scheduled) to pick up more people. Then after we arrived at Pompeii we had to wait while the guide ran around aggregating yet more people. Obviously they were joining together multiple tour groups, with many people being last minute additions. When at last we were all together, we then joined the queue to buy our tickets. All these delays resulted in us only having 1.5 hours actually in the Pompeii ruins, out of a morning which started at 8am!
Anyway, as I said the day started well and at one of the seaside hotel pick-ups we got this view of Vesuvius, and also the sea-side of the Castle, showing what an impressive structure it really is.
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I guess everyone knows about Pompeii? A roman town just south of Naples on the flanks of the volcano Mt Vesuvius which erupted in AD79, burying the city in ash and pumice. People were trapped in homes and other places and suffocated. There was a strong earthquake in AD63 which extensively damaged the town, so it’s not as ‘pristine’ now as it might have been. It lat forgotten for about 1,800 years; much, but not all of the town has been excavated.
The tour was rushed and I’m sure parts were dropped off because we had so little time left. Pompeii is a very large site, and it would take a day or more to cover it all, but I have studied it a bit and we didn’t go to 2 or 3 of the ‘classic’ sights there. We would have dumped the guide, but we didn’t have any maps of our own with us.
Here’s the theatre and one of the streets; the buildings are shops lining the road.
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On the left below is one of the forms Pompeii is well known for. When people we covered by the ash, their bodies decayed inside. When they were eventually re-discovered almost 2000 years later, there was just a cavity and in the early endeavours, plaster was poured into the cavity and a mould of the person, in their last moments, made. I hope people don’t think this ghoulish or unpalatable. There is no ‘person’ left, just their shape. Its less of ‘dealing with the dead’ than, say a skeleton or even a skull. There are these plaster forms in situ in several of the houses and this is one of the sights I was very eager to see, but all we saw was this one form, in a case in one of the ruins.
The second pic shows one of the places that was a feature of the tour – brothels. We visited several, in somewhat of a titavating way. The brothels were marked by phallic symbols outside (all eagerly pointed out to us) and this one – visited by everyone it seems - had mosaics of couples in, shall we say, karma sutra type activities.
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The panorama shows the town Forum.
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The last pair of pics shows Vesuvius lurking in the background of the Forum area and another one of the streets.
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We were then taken to the ‘Restaurant Vesuvius’ for lunch prior to the next tour and during this time the guide again tacked on people, sent them to other tours and generally wheeled and dealt. The lunch, in a large tourist type cafeteria, was simply inedible and a couple of us wandered outside to get some fruit. There were other Aussies in the Pompeii tour, and continuing to Vesuvius and they were equally as pissed off as we were.
Maybe the La Griffe would exceed expectations?
