Yes, there She goes…again! This time, I’m solo traveling in Rome for a work conference and decided to extend my stay. Having recently watched a documentary about Pompeii, I booked a day trip to the Almafi Coast to visit Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius. The hotel I’m staying at (boring Mariott 40 minutes outside of the city center) has nothing around it so I’m glad I booked the day trip to get away and see more of Italy.
Pompeii is about 3 hours away from Rome and we arrived to the most beautiful weather for strolling through the remains of the devastating volcano eruption in 79 AD. You read that right… 79 AD. The tour I booked included a guide who walked us through only about 1/4 of the complex. Lily the tour guide gave great information and took us to some really interesting locations. One of the more fascinating things included a range of phallic symbols prominently displayed on the side of buildings thought to bring about fertility and ward off the ‘evil eye.’ I’m not sure a phallus is a good display for fertility (you need a womb), but there were at least 2 that Lily pointed out; when I come back to Italy (with David next time), it could be a fun scavenger hunt to find some more of them.
Pompeii is so fascinating and Lily took this picture of me in front of Mt. Vesuvius. It looks small in the photo but it’s eruption was devastating as you can see plastered casts of 3 people who perished with their hands covering their faces or like they were crawling to escape – likely looking for relief from all the ash that fell over everyone.
Since Pompeii is so well preserved, you can still see the brilliant colors of the frescos and how beautiful the city actually was. What also is preserved is the Lupanar which is the only purpose-built brothel. Fun fact: the name Lupanar comes from the latin word lupa, meaning she-wolf, an ancient Roman slang for “sex worker.” For a city displaying phallic symbols prominently on the side of buildings, it’s not surprising that they decided their city needed a brothel. However, the stone mattress and pillow (yes, they are beds) look like uncomfortable working conditions; I wonder if the lupa organized a union for better tools for the job or at least got hazard pay.
The tile below our feet in this picture is part of a domus – the Italian way to say rich people houses. Look at the pattern and detail – wow!
The Casa degli Amanti is one of those domus and named for a sign on the wall (below) that roughly translates as follows: “Amantes, ut apes, vita(m) mellita(m) exigunt” (“Lovers, like bees, lead a life as sweet as honey”).
I could fill this whole post up with photos from Pompeii but you’ll have to visit yourself and see the bakeries with forno (oven), thermal bath houses (there are 5 of them), or the outdoor kitchen stalls for vendors to make hot food on demand. I certainly will be back because we didn’t get to see the gladiator arena which was at the far end of the complex. After the tour, we headed to a lunch spot to have true Neapolitan Margarita pizza, named for a the Queen who visited and wanted to try this new flat bread invented there. And that’s why the colors of the pizza are the same as the Italian flag.
With lunch over, we settled back into the bus for a visit to Mt. Vesuvius. I didn’t read all the details at the time of booking and was surprised that we had a 30 minute hike up to the top of the crater. My lunch buddy took this photo of me on the way up. I was just grateful to have a rest before having to hike up 685 feet.
The fitness tracking app on my watch really puts into perspective how far I walked and just how deep that crater is, on an active volcano. At least going down would be quicker if we had to evacuate fast. Luckily for me, the active volcano stayed dormant during my visit.
I finally got to see the Almafi coast and now I know why they say “la dolce vita“. The weather is gorgeous, the views are stunning and it’s nice to eat in a country where the food isn’t slowly poisoning you.
We stopped at one more place, a limoncello producer’s store front, and got to try so many free samples of limoncello (yum), limonrella (yuck, because what do you mean you use the milk from mozarella) & limonrum (yum, because that’s a good mix). And just to prove that I am actually here on business, here’s me on the way to the conference and at the dinner outing organized by the event staff at a villa overlooking the city.
