Third weekend in a row... why not go on another road trip! This time it was with school though so no renting of the foreign cars. We left 8am on Friday morning, all larchies and archies on a coach bus. We got to Pompeii about 11:30 and all forty of us headed over to a restaurant next to the bus parking lot to eat lunch. Apparently bus parking at all of the tourist attractions is really expensive and these people offered free parking if the buses unloaded their passengers into the restaurant.. Weird how these Europeans do things. Anyway we had really good pizza and yellow french fries that weren't that great, and then headed to the archeological site. It was really cool to actually be there since I've learned about it and even made a model of one of the houses freshman year. It was way bigger than I had imagined. I think they said something like a city of 17,000 people but in my mind it was a city of about 100 people. It was really weird to think how those people must of lived. Walking through the streets it seemed like such a close-knit community. Shops in front of everyones house, a common forum, a stadium, and a theater. It was probably like a college campus! We even saw the plastered bodies which was really weird. When the excavated years ago, they would dig throw the rubble and rock and when they came to a hole they would stop and fill the hole with plaster. They would then break that open like a mold and it turned out the plaster filled a whole where a decayed body had been. The positions they were in were very dramatic. Most would probably assume that people were smothered by lava but actually they suffocated to death from the poisonous gas. They were then buried with ash from the explosion.
After Pompeii we got back on the bus and drove another hour and a half south to Paestum. Our teacher has a friend that owns a hotel on the beach there so naturally that is where we stayed. Beautiful hotel! As soon as we got there everyone rushed to the beach. We watched the sun set and the boys played football. Then we went back to the hotel where we were served a three course (free) meal. It was all stuff that was made or grown on site so that was pretty interesting.
The next day we went to the archeological site of Paestum. This was a site in Italy made by the Greeks. They are the best preserved Greek temples in the world. We walked around there for a while and took some pictures and sketches. Then we headed to a local restaurant and had the most delicious paninis ever! and of course gelato to follow! It was a quick but good weekend and we got to see a lot!
