Pompeii

OK, OK. I get tired of blogging. For this being Leann's thing, I am the only one that does it basically. This was our time in Pompeii. Pompeii is a city that was buried by a volcano in about 70 A.D. That is only 40 years about after Jesus died. This would have been right around Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus. It was preserved just as Jesus would have seen it. That is the most amazing thing about it. In the back of this picture under the tree is Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano that erupted that covered Pompeii. By the way, Pompeii had the population of about 20,000 they estimated when the volcano erupted. In the bottom right part of the picture would ahve been to boat docks. The sea would have come all the way up to the brick by the tree in the very center of the tree. The volcano ended up adding about 1.5 miles of land to the get to where the sea is now. (Also, there are vendors just down the hill that sell lemonade from the home grown lemons they are famous for in that area. DON'T TRY IT!!! It is pure lemon juice - no sugar, no water, nothing but lemon and pulp. It was gross - thanks Titus!) :)
The picture below depicts the crosswalks throughout Pompeii. They were made like this so that horses and carriages could still pass through the streets, but people didn't have to walk in the muck and poo. On the right and the left are the actual sidewalks. They were very smooth for the most part from all the wear while people lived there.

This is a little street in the town. You can see the buildings on both sides and if you look at the bottom of the picture in the street, you can see two lines about a carriage width apart. This is where the the actual carriages had worn down the stones in the street. It is amazing how smooth they were too. The streets were very well laid and it was amazing to see them.

Have a hankering to go out to eat. They had that too. Here is a diner of sorts where in the open holes, they would have had pots filled with stuff that they could serve to people on the street. One of the most fascinating things that we saw was how smooth the things were in the town. The countertop here could rival marble or granite counter tops that we install in our houses to this very day. We saw the marble baths that the city had that were better than any bath I have seen in our houses to this day.

After hours and hours of walking, we decided it was time to go. The city is worth the trip and mostly because of the Biblical history that Leann and I know. It is amazing to see the stories in the Bible that talk about the cities and what they were to do and how to be Christians. Then, walking through the city you could see exactly what things looked like and why it was hard to be a Christian during this time. I didn't post it, but the first thing you see when you come into the city is the Temple of Athena, which would be saying that the city was her domain and she was the patron god from the Greek mythology. There was a brothel and other things that just showed you what the culture was like and how they aren't really much different than we are today.