The town is quite modern with lots of new roads and constructions. Soon after entering the outskirt of the city, our rental GPS froze. No matter how many times I tried to reset it, it wouldn't come back again.
I hoped this wasn't the curse from this ancient burial site. I was worried beyond belief but I couldn't show it so I put on a poker face to calm my wife's nerve.
How the heck we were going to figure out the direction from this point on. The traffic system here isn't anything like ours in the U.S, with all the unfamiliar names and numbers ... oh gosh!
I called Hertz, the car rental company, and to my dismay, I only had 2 options:
- One, I had to go back to the original branch where I had picked up the car, an hour of driving away to trade for a new one at no cost. And worse yet, I didn't have a slightest idea of how to get there from my current location.
- Two, the closest branch I could get a replacement was very closed to Rome, almost 3 hour of driving from here. It's our final destination before heading for home. But first we had to get to the hotel that I had booked in the coastal town of Focene near Fiumicino Airport.
All my driving life in the U.S, for some reasons, I've just hated Tomtom GPSs. The designs are bulky. The maps are undefined. And after this, it would surely make me hate it even more. I had anticipated some kinda problems ahead of time, but never thought it was going to be ... dead like this. Some hiccups and minor issues, yes but not this completely K.I.A (killed in action), damn.
I spent more than 30 minutes driving around the town center trying to figure out on how to get to the ruins without the mean of communications. Nobody spoke English here and I spoke no Italian. With my limited Spanish, I had to make do. We found a small restaurant which was not too far from the site's ticket counters. I parked my rental nearby and we went inside to order some lunch. I did fed the parking meter some coins. It was expensive to park anywhere in the continent of Europe.
With all kind of problems we had to deal with so far today, I had never expected this. After we finished our meals and on the way back to our car, a parking officer was writing me a ticket for 6 minutes over! What the hell!
I got so pissed but I determined not to let these things bother me. So we marched on to start our Pompeii exploration.
The ruin which they allow visitors is no more than a couple square miles. All of the houses, the buildings and the community constructions were so intact that they didn't look like they were built over two thousand years ago.
According to the historians, the people and buildings of Pompeii were covered in up to twelve different layers of volcanic ashes produced by Mount Vesuvius eruption, in total 25 meters deep, which rained down continuously for about 6 long hours.
At one site, we found it said in English that Pompeii town and its people were eradicated by this event on November 23rd 79 AD, almost two thousand years ago.
The whole area was eerily silent and that made the hair on the back of my head stood up and goosebumps popped up all over my body.
The objects buried beneath Pompeii were well-preserved for almost two thousand years. The lack of air and moisture allowed for the objects to remain underground with little to no deterioration. All the kitchen utensils were hung nicely at one of the house make it looks like time had frozen still.
You can see houses from modest to majestic; see Roman shops, baths and brothels; or the Latin words that are still visible on some of the walls. There was even a few color maps on a wall of which looks like a town official building.
It may takes days if not weeks to visit all the sites, which we didn't have. From the amphitheater side looking back into the town, we can see vividly how at one time, the inhabitants of Pompeii thrived. Their houses and building said a lot about their richness and advanced skills.
What surprised me the most were the sexual content of many paintings which were all over the place. They were in many places surrounded by their common residential complex. Even many recovered household items had a sexual theme. There were at least a couple of brothels in such a small establishment.
It was almost 3 in the afternoon. We had to drive back to Rome before sunset. I got to give a bit of extra time just in case we got lost without the GPS. I found a paper map from a local souvenir shop. It was time to leave.
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