Field trip!

My school organizes ongoing activities for the students. There's everything from film nights, to walks around neighborhoods, to all day trips out of town. I decided to sign up for the trip on Saturday to Pompeii and Napoli. I've been wanting to see Pompeii for awhile and even tried to get on a tour while my brother was here. I was definitely excited to see it and excited to get out of Rome for the day.
I had to get up super early and go to school to meet the tour bus. On my way there, via the city bus, I had another interesting experience. Now, I think I've possibly mentioned how Italian women stare. It is up there with the way Indian men stare. It's not just a little look or a sideways glance. It is a full on, mouth open, looking straight at you, for as long as you will let them stare at you. Now you are probably wondering, what could I possibly do that would make them stare at me. It doesn't take much but here it is - I filed my nails. Yup. Shocking. I sat down in the bus across from this mother and her teenage daughter. They were going on about something and I think the daughter wanted her mother to give her something and the mother wasn't going to do it. (Hey! I understood some of their conversation!) They were deep into this discussion. I pulled out my nail file and started taking care of a snag on one of my nails. I'm going about my business for a minute or so and I realize that they've stopped talking and I can feel them staring at me. I turn and look and they are both looking directly at me with their mouths open, staring. When I catch them, they sort of look away, pretending to notice the dirt on the floor. I'm sure my look was "what". Is filing your nails offensive in Rome? Is this written somewhere and no one told me? I immediately started to look through the catalog in my brain and see if I had any memory of anyone filing their nails on the bus. No memories, but the bus is usually so crowded that people are crowd surfing over the top to make it to the exits. Was I doing something totally offensive or is this just another thing for Italian women to stare at? I think I'm going to have my camera ready next time and take their picture.
Allora, onto my field trip.
We headed to Pompeii first. I was excited to see it. I had recalled people saying it was interesting because it was a whole village just stuck in this time and this situation. People had also mentioned what was really intense were the people who had tried to run from the volcano explosion and they were frozen in their attempt. A classmate mentioned that when she was little she had seen a dog running with sausages in his mouth.
I didn't have high expectations that this would be some monumental experience. I expected to see a really well preserved, interesting ruin. I wasn't that impressed. The problem is that they take out so many pieces of the ruins here and they put them into museums. There were pieces here that weren't the originals. Those were in a museum. I expected to see these people frozen in time. There were a few but they were in glass boxes in a sort of storage area behind a gate.


I understand that everything needs to be secured and protected from thief, weather, etc. but this is possible to do without turning the actual ruin into a boring maze of old buildings. Even if they had one area set up as a sort of display of what it might have been like for these people, that would have been an interesting scenario to see. I think I prefer to see a little of the "here's how they lived" shadowbox display.
I did see the bordello and the accompanying sign directing people to it - see photo.

They did have some nicely preserved bath areas and that was interesting to see. I also realized after the fact that I didn't see it all. It's huge and we just saw a portion of it. I think that they didn't want to overwhelm us with a tour of the whole place and as it was I think we were there for over two hours. So maybe I won't discount the place completely since I didn't see all of it.
After Pompeii we went to Napoli for just a short visit of about 1 1/2 hours. I had super low expectations of Napoli. For starters, you might have heard that they have a garbage problem. Maybe you haven't but it it's been going on awhile. The garbage collection and disposal is managed by organized crime. So as we were driving through Napoli to Pompeii and then back to visit the city, you see loads of garbage everywhere. It's not just bags of garbage but the piles also include tires, couches, matresses, etc. It's really nasty. It's sad too when you think of why the problem exists.

Anyway, we got into the city and started to wander around and it was actually a really great city - what I saw of it. I was pleasantly surprised at how cute it was and how nice the center of the city looked. A small group of us decided to just hit a grand cafe for warm drinks. It had been pissing rain on and off all day so we were all pretty well cold and wet. We found a great spot with heaters, because of course we're still sitting outside, and had a nice chat.

I got home pretty late and indulged myself with cheese, bread, wine, chocolate, and four episodes of America's Next Top Model (downloaded from itunes).
Such an interesting and nice day.