Napoli et Pompeii – November 13

I am in Italy for two weeks. I booked 18 months ago and paid monthly since then for a week in Sicily. I decided to add a couple days to the beginning (for Pompeii) and the end (for Rome). Today was Pompeii, and I am overwhelmed with wonder and joy. Like a little kid. I bought a three day ticket and I do believe I will go back three days in a row. I had planned to maybe visit a museum or some catacombs in Napoli, but my God Pompeii. It’s so large. I did not expect it to be so sprawling and large. So many paths and trails and corners, villas large and small. Bakeries and food counters (without food – ancient food counters, made of marble), mosaic floors, frescoes, columns, baths, corner fountains with faces, a startlingly large number of phalluses. It has the tight feel of the Quarter, actually, I can imagine it busy like Bourbon Street. The lupinaria is CLOSED FOR REPAIR which fills me with sorrow, but I saw a lot of places. Tomorrow I want to go back to the Theater district, and I need to see the amphitheater. I followed a Rick Steves walking tour which was great except I could not down load it. Had to stay on data roaming all day, which ate up my phone battery (I bought an international plan so shouldn’t be pricey on dollars, just power). I wonder if Spotify has some walking tour guides I can download for tomorrow or something.

I wanted to record as much as possible in pictures and videos, because I am writing a novel about Pompeii. The details, the tiny extras are such a source of inspiration and lifelike description – I snapped photos of doorway thresholds, undersides of arches, inside a bakers beehive shaped oven. I am sure there are beautiful books of better-taken Pompeii photos I can refer to, and I will say I deeply enjoyed the last hour of the day when I turned off my phone to spare battery for the ride home – I could not take pictures then, and had to just look.

It’s been a while since something excited me this much. I was supposed to travel here in 7th grade with my Latin class and Ms. Seagle, our teacher (she had a buzz cut and lots of earrings up the side, a very punk rock Latin teacher especially for the early nineties.) She went through the process of gathering info for a school organized tour type deal, and we attended a couple of meetings in the classroom with slideshows and overhead projectors, old school style. In the end, I think we did not have enough interest to take the trip – for one reason or another, it was canceled and not rescheduled. And since that time in 1990 or so, I have wanted to come here. Today’s was a trip 35 years in the making, and it was just as magical as I’ve always imagined it to be. That’s a heavy burden for a place to bear – 35 years of anticipation – but it lived up to the hype.

More to come. I’m going back tomorrow!