Day Five - Death in an Erculano field
A shocking, at least for me, aside. I’ve written over 2180 words about this holiday so far.* I’m enjoying the writing a lot because:
a) The more I write the better I get and the more I enjoy it. So this is good practice
b) In the words of my wife, I’m a geek
c) I don’t sleep as much as Emma so I have to do something. A drum kit was out of the question
c) The lizard makes me
Today, finally, I did Herculaneum and Vesuvius. Emma stayed at the hotel, as I mentioned earlier, no way could she walk up Vesuvius as she’s now about half term. So I hopped onto a train from Sorrento and got off at Erculano Sparta. Five minutes down the road is the site itself. The aim was then to get the local bus and go up Vesuvius while it still cool in the morning. No joy, my guidebook said the bus service was infrequent and it was unerringly accurate; as I arrived the bus drove off.
Rather than wait another hour and a half for a bus, in the increasingly hot morning sun, I decided to go wander around Herculaneum and do the volcano hike later; this wasn’t the ideal order in which to do them. Climbing a volcano in the midday sun didn’t sound like a good idea to me. Or even a bad idea; it sounded bloody stupid. But I had no choice, the volcano would have to wait.
Mythology says Herculaneum was founded by Hercules, it was the playground of the Roman rich and famous. In 73 AD it suffered a major earthquake and was heavily damaged. From then on it was less populous, which saved a number of lives when the eruption hit it; although 500 bodies were found sheltering in a warehouse.
The site is a lot smaller than Pompeii and is a lot better preserved, the bath house even has the original wooden doors, petrified solid some 2000 years later. Again I went nuts with the camera and took a few pictures, a couple of which you can find here. [Linky when I get to it] Oh, and of course, I missed the next bus while I meandered around the site, but I didn’t want to rush.
This left the ‘Collectivo Taxi’ a mini cab that you can hire on the street, and anyone else, as it drives around. I was the only one who was going as far as Vesuvius; everyone else was a local. As the last local got off and the mini bus drove at insane speed around seemingly random backstreets I got the distinct impression that I was going to end up dead or sold into slavery. I was weighing up how to survive when we pulled up at Vesuvius, I felt cheated and nearly demanded the driver punch me.
As it happened I just got ripped off, which I could deal with. Regardless of expense I ended up at Vesuvius and here’s the view [Linky]. Hiking up there in the heat was about as much fun as the taxi ride. I’m already burnt to a crisp, as a paid up member of the geek ’sitting in front of the computer too much’ club I tan in the following manner: White, Bright Red, Blister, White. I don’t go brown, I’m so white I refract light.
So now I’m tired as hell, it’s been a long day. A lot more happened today and if I get to do a second draft**, I may add it in. But right now I’m too tired. Tomorrow is Capri.
* Closer to 4000 by the end, colour me surprised.
** Unlikely.
