Sorrento Days 54,55,56

We left Rome and headed south to Sorrento by train via Naples. Sorrento is on the Amalfi Coast and is a small, seaside town near Pompeii.

We arrived on the night of a full moon.

Seaside view of Sorrento.

View down the main street toward the Cathedral. After Rome/Florence/Venice, it was strange, but nice to be in a city with three primary streets that were restricted to pedestrians (and scooters) most of the time we were there. We ran into a surprising number of English speaking tourists, but only one other American couple. They were from Colorado and he was a tax attorney.

View of Sorrento's harbor.

View of Sorrento from the harbor.

 And another view.

 Scooters are popular in Sorrento too.

 Outside of a wood shop where most of the carvings were of dolls, there was this life sized motorcycle. We thought about bringing it back for Chris Lewis, but could not carry it. Maybe Evan can make one?

 One day we took the short train ride to Pompeii to visit the ruins. The entire archaeological site is around 50 acres and the visiting area is approximately 11 acres. This is the Forum.

Forum ruins with Vesuvius in the background. The city was thought to have been founded in the 6th century BC. The eruption was in 79 AD. It is estimated that 20,000 people lived there at the time. The town was abandoned until 1599 when some of the city was discovered by a construction project,but the significant excavations began in the late 1700s.

 This is not a dead dog. All around the grounds there are wild dogs and visitors may make a donation to care for the dogs. The dogs were very well behaved and we never saw any dog crap, which is more than can be said about the sidewalks in Rome.

One of the plaster casts of a victim of the eruption.

 Another cast. You can see the sleeve of the person's clothing.

 Cast of a dog that is believed to have been chained at the time of the eruption.

This is a bakery with the oven in the background and a mill used to grind wheat in the foreground. From 79 AD!

 Frescoe in the Villa dei Misteri.

The streets are in remarkably good condition, You can see ruts from the wagon wheels. The large stones in the center were level with the sidewalks and used by pedestrians to cross the streets, which would have contained water and sewage. They also served as speed controls to slow down the wagons as even back then the Italians were crazy drivers.

A vineyard on the grounds with the ruins of the amphitheater in the background. Apparently, Pink Floyd performed here in the 1970s. Seriously; look it up.

From inside the ruins of the Villa dei Misteri.

There was nothing describing what this was, but we assume a battering ram?

After a few days in Sorrento/Pompeii, we took a train to Salerno where we caught a ferry to Tunis via Palermo. It was about a 26 hour ferry ride across the Mediterranean Sea to Africa.

Our accomodations were much nicer than our last ferry.