Ancora e Ancora

Today we went back and re-did experiences similar to ones we had already visited. But they were different, and in some respects better.

Herculaneum, with Ercolano above and behind

Our first destination this morning was Herculaneum, another town destroyed in the Vesuvius eruption of 79AD. But unlike Pompeii, which was covered in ash, Herculaneum was smothered in a pyroclastic flow, which carbonised and to a great extent preserved organic materials. Being lighter than ash, it also meant that fewer buildings collapsed, and it's possible to see second floors and roofs still intact there. We asked our guide at Pompeii the other day if it was worth visiting both towns, and she said it definitely was, and in fact Herculaneum was a kind of concentrated Pompeii: it's smaller and has more relics intact. She also said that after having seen Pompeii and heard her commentary, we wouldn't need a guide there, because she'd be explaining the archaeological features and points to look out for. She was right, too, but we paid for an audio guide today anyway.

Herculaneum victims (replicas)

The Herculaneum walk-through started from a site that used to be on the sea-shore, but is now faced with a rock wall maybe 15m high. Some years ago excavators discovered the skeletons of more than 300 people who had gathered at the beach hoping for a rescue by sea that never came. The skeletons were piled in boat-sheds and equipment lock-ups, and copies have been replaced there. Again, it brings the human aspect forward full force: this is not just some abandoned ghost-town we're looking at, it was the site of a massive and shocking tragedy.

But the houses are impressive: there are a lot of mosaic floors, painted friezes, wall paintings and so on. There was even a bottle store with wooden (scorched but intact) shelving and railings. And a lot of roofless stone walls also. But the number of tourists wandering round actually helps you imagine what the streets could have been like when they were lined with taverns, bakeries, fishmongers, wine shops and so on.

Wine shop: note the blackened railings
 and the shelves on the rights for
laying amphorae on 

We had left home early and again started at the station before Centrale in order to get a seat on the train. At the end of our visit  at around 11.30, we left Herculaneum and walked up the main road of the present town, Ercolano, hoping to see somewhere for lunch. There was a bistro just off the main drag, and we had a nice (albeit a bit over-fancy) lunch, then continued towards the station. We had a wait of about 15 minutes for the train, and were able to find seats together for the trip home.

We had a bit of a zzz until later in the afternoon, when our next repeat performance was planned.  Yesterday we chose to do an underground tour of the water system of the area, but it wasn't very engaging. We decided to try our luck today with the other underground tour that was offered just metres away. This one was around an archaeological dig under a church. Naples started off being inhabited by the Greeks, then the Romans took it over in the first century AD. About 400 years after that, a huge mudslide buried the lower levels of everything  around. But later, after the

Roman fishmongers' shops
between columns of market square

mud had hardened and everyone had forgotten what was underneath (we're talking medieval times here), more construction went on. There is now a church on top, but there used to be a Roman market below, and they have been able to identify certain shops (we were shown a bakery, a laundry and a dyer, among others) as well as government offices and schoolrooms. This was a much more interesting story than yesterday's, and it was also a lot more photogenic.

After that it was nearly time for dinner, but we also wanted to find an ATM. After some hopeful but fruitless wandering, we decided to retrace my steps from a few mornings ago, when I found one very early on, but by now a lot of shops were closed and shuttered, and the ATMs that might have been there were locked behind iron doors. So we gave up on that and we'll just have to hope for tomorrow, but unfortunately a lot of the closed places were also restaurants. There seems to be a lot fewer places to eat on a Sunday night here.We both felt like pasta for some reason, so we passed by some pizzerias, but eventually we found a place that was more than just pasta. Sadly it was not much more than just pizza, and all their pasta dishes looked to be tomato-based. But when I asked (and no one in the place had more than a couple of words of English - they weren't aiming for the tourist market) they offered to alter one of the dishes to make it bianca instead of tomatoey. Which was lovely of them, but the meal was actually pretty disappointing in the end. It was swordfish with rocket, but it took ages to come and even so the pasta was a bit undercooked. Luckily it was cheap and we could pay with a Visa card.

Then we walked home. I put on a load of laundry and started this. Then I finished this. The End.