Rome, November 8 - 14

We had 5 days to explore Rome before heading home. We could have easily spent another 5 to 7 days touring the museums and sights and doing more photography.

(Remember to click on pic to enlarge.)

Researching history before the trip would have been helpful too. We did study the history of the Venice region which was immensely helpful for understanding ancient Italy.

So where do we start? Our apartment was near the Spanish Steps. The Steps were made famous by the movie Roman Holiday.

Can you find Sue?

 I have fallen and I can't get up!

We had a private tour guide to show us the Roman ruins and associated museums. Tour guides are licensed and must pass tests before they can lead tours. All are college educated with majors in history, archeology or art history. This really helped understand what we were seeing.

Note the cross planted where the Emperor sat. Justice.

Julius Caesar was killed near the center tree.

We also toured the Vatican Museum and St Peter's Basilica and the Capitoline Museum.

 Inside St. Peter's Basilica

The Pope's apartment is on the top floor second window from the right. He addresses the public in St. Peter's Square every Sunday from that location.

The Dying Soldier

And the fountains...

And the Pantheon... A Roman pagan temple converted to a Christian church.  If it had not become a church it would have been destroyed for building materials.

We saw these locks in Italy a lot...

St. Peter's Basilica behind us.

We have had an epic trip. Italy is an amazing place. The history, food, nice people, architecture, scenery, and language have been fascinating. We are already looking forward to future trips.

Sorrento, November 4 - 8

Sorrento is a nice place to relax. (Click on pics to make them bigger.)

Mount Vesuvius

The prices were very reasonable and the food was great.

Sorrento makes for a great base camp for exploring Naples, Capri, Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii and Herculeum. We only had time to visit Pompeii and Herculeum.

Both cities were destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Pompeii was destoyed by hot pyroclastic flows. About 13 to 20 feet of ash covered the City. The Romans that were not able to escape were killed almost instantaneously by the heat from pyroclastic flows. The ash encased their bodies. Here are some pics of Pompeii. 

We visited another villiage destroyed by the 79 AD eruption called Herculeum. This village was more of a wealthy resort town than a trade center such as Pompeii. Herculeum was buried in 60 feet of mud flows. The ash encased bodies and exposed skeletons were shocking to see. We struggled with our feelings for these ancient Romans. Their society was built on the backs of slaves. We wanted to have sympathy but these high society Romans were not nice people.

 Note skeletons in arches.

 Fountain

Founder

Shocking reality 

The next day we had tremendous thunderstorms in Sorrento.

The day we were leaving we had 2 hours scheduled for a 30-40 minute drive to the train station in Naples. But, our driver explained to us that the tunnels we needed to go through to get to Naples were closed due to the storms. After changing to a later train we learned that one of our driver's co-workers was also headed to the train station and knew a way to get there by traveling back roads and through a town down by the bay. We ultimately made it on time for our original train by following the co-worker. Our wonderful driver took the initiative to go into the station with us and he changed our tickets back to our original time. What kind people we have met in Italy!

 On to our last stop in Rome.