Naples, Pompeii, Paestum

Last weekend was our final fieldtrip.

1) Napoli. I learned about Naples in my English class. At one time it was a destination city, but now it is run down and dirty. When we first arrived, we drove by the train station. The next block, there was a dead body covered in a white sheet. Hmm. Well, we went to a museum with artefacts from ancient times. Many statues. We saw Kouros and Doryphoros, 2 statues that show the development of controposto, or weight shift in the body. Also, a giant statue of Hercules. He must have been very strong! The ancient Romans were huge fans of Hercules, and we saw him in Paestum also. I recognized many statues of emperors from my Classics class. After the museum, we had free time for lunch. We all got pizzas, but they also served snake and turtle.

2) Pompeii. We went to see ancient Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius loomed in the background. Claudio showed us how dust normally flies away from the city, but on the fatal day that Vesuvius blew up, it was blowing towards the city. I was excited to see many things from my textbooks here. They were able to pour plaster into some of the holes in the rock and dust and found that those were organic remains. They had remains of bodies, human and dog, and some of them you could see toes or skull sticking out the ends. That was very sad. But the houses and buildings (theater, amphitheater, brothel, shops, bakery, temple, basilica, forum etc) were very cool to see. Also fascinating how much archaeologists can discover from little clues. They have not uncovered the entire city in hopes that technology will improve and they can learn more.

We stayed the night in Pompeii. The hotel fit all 70 or so of us. We had a community dinner in the hotel: penne with red sauce, veal, potatoes, bread, ice cream (they did not have any gelato in Southern Italy). Afterwards, we went for a walk down the main street of modern Pompeii. Even though I was stuffed, I needed to try the regional pastries- one looked like a shell. The outside was crunchy and buttery and the inside was very dense with little bits of fruit in it. The other looked like a cork. They poured liquid on top, and the whole thing was very wet. I asked why, and they told me it was baked with rum. Pretty good, very unusual.

3) Paestum. Mainly three Greek temples here. They looked like the Parthenon. We also went to a museum that showed us more grave goods and other artefacts found. 5 hour drive back.