Slip through the cracks

We arrived in Italy without any problems on Monday, which also happened to be my birthday. I upgraded my phone package so I am able to receive calls, messages, go on the internet, etc. so I was able to see all of the people who wished me a happy birthday on FB. Unfortunately, my blackberry is basically one of the original models and has almost the same capabilities as Zack Morris' phone and won't allow me to check facebook messages. This caused me to be in a hump for most of the day as my so-called best "friends" hadn't said happy birthday. As I am about the write a nasty, childish email, I get wi-fi on my laptop and low and behold, they have all private messaged me. Woops.

Anyway, on to the travels. We arrived in Sorrento and played it low key for the first night. On Tuesday, we thought we'd venture to Pompeii to see the city that was dominated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Things to note about Pompeii:
1. It is in fact a city. Although it is an archaeological cite, it is nearly as large as Stratford and walking around it is like walking through an entire city of 20 000. This was NOT an hour journey.
2. Between "important" areas, there are just rows and rows of old houses that are basic squares. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.
3. Italy is hot.
4. Italy is a country known for great thinkers, cartographers, and historically wise individuals. Apparently the current map designer for Pompeii was not one of those individuals and definitely had slipped through the cracks. The map given to us to follow was as if they took a chimp from a zoo through Pompei once, returned him to his cage, and asked him to paint where he thought places were on the walls of his confinement in shit. I pride myself in having a great sense of direction, yet we could not manage to find anything. Not only that, but we had an audio-guide to punch in numbers when we arrived in specific places, yet there were no numbers labelled in the areas. Therefore you had to assume you were where you were supposed to be, punch in the numbers and listen to what the place was all about. More than once I heard "you are now looking at the great columns made of limestone..." only for me to actually be looking at a barren field and some trees.
5. When something was actually labelled and noted as important, it was locked up so you couldn't go into that specific house or area. Unsure as to why, but possibly something to do with it being free on the day we went because it was Rome heritage day or something like that.

After nearly four hours of wandering and randomly stumbling across most of the important cites, we called it quits. We checked the map one last time and were quite pleased that we saw 95% of what was scribbled down.
On the way home, Sean told me he was kind of disappointed with the cite as it was not what he expected. Mom agreed, they thought we would be seeing the preserved bodies of some of the victims and it's too bad they weren't there. (NOTE: my parents didn't make this up, it wasn't a pipe dream that they wished to have seen dead bodies, apparently when they researched the place, this was one of the highlights of the areas.) Sean thought maybe they had moved all of the bodies to Naples Museum, as they did with many of the other artifacts listed around the area.

When we got back to the hotel, Sean reread the map/information he had, and realized that the ONE room we didn't go to, was the area where all the bodies were. Brilliant. Here is the map where we hit almost 67 / 72 areas:

To the right, you can see a big square area (number 61) beside the giant circle (60). We missed the small rectangle two to the left (number 56).


I looked the bodies up online and it is almost as if I saw them in person. If you would like to pretend you saw something important in Italy too, please click on the link below:


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pompeii+bodies&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=HrOmTfLxK82WhQeMncjFCQ&ved=0CCAQsAQ&biw=1259&bih=686