April 19 - Pompeii

To get to Pompeii from Sorrento we needed to catch the local train on the Circumvesuviano line.  We arrived at the station early in order to get a seat.  We sat on our train for about twenty minutes as more and more people began to fill the train.  Shortly before we were due to depart there was an announcement in Italian.  Immediately the other passengers stood up, left the train, and moved en masse to another platform.  Although we had not understood the announcement, we now knew what it meant.  We followed the crowd and were fortunate to get what looked like the last two remaining seats on our new train.

Pompeii was interesting.  It is a strange, desolate kind of place.  Even though there are tourists everywhere, there is still a sense of a city and its people having been destroyed.  The volcanic ash which covered the buildings suffocated the citizens.  This same ash is what has preserved the remnants of the city which we view today.

I found walking around Pompeii very difficult.  The paving stones which line the streets are uneven in shape and height.  My cane did not move easily over this surface.  I could not see the spaces between the stones and my progress was unsteady.

The first photo shows the entrance to the city, which is actually the original back gate.  The second picture shows me under one of the arches which are still standing in the city today.