Pompeii

Pompeii 9/25
Yesterday we connected with a couple friends of Leroy's and decided to all split a car and driver and go up to Pompeii. Driving is such an amazing experience here, best left to local professionals... He was a delight and the trip was great. Pompeii was way more interesting than I expected, 2 hrs. was not enough time, but we did catch many of the highlights....

When over run by an eruption from Vesuvius on Aug. 24, 79 AD, Pompeii was a city of some 10,000 people. This is the inside the Basilica in Pompeii.	The basilica, built in the second half of the second century BC, was dedicated to administering justice and for business negotiations....	A classic column
Automatic cat food dispenser for vacationing Pompeian's	The forum granary, a produce market, is now used to house various archeological artifacts including a great deal of functional as well as ornamental pottery, several plaster casts of victims and even one of a pig...
Building of Eurinanchia. Are you ready for this? On the right side of this building as a walled in jar into which people could urinate. The emperor Vespassian then taxed the use of the urine as a fabric bleach and a degreasing agent!	First contact with post calamity Pompeii [rediscovery] wasn't until the 16th century.....	Some of the many unidentified ruins around Pompeii....
		This beautiful fresco of Italy's favorite daughter, Venus, was on the south wall of a large walled in garden. It was one of three panels, but the only one I got a picture of and the best of the three....
These ruts were carved by carriage wheels.... The streets were actually the public sewers as well. Note the stepping stones placed every 50 meters or so that you could use to cross over to the "sidewalk" on the other side....	No sightseeing adventure would be complete without some anti-pasti	I didn't notice these at first, now I see them everywhere.... Doggie-do-depositories

Seen on a plate today: Antipasti of roast vegetables, insalada mista, pasta with pepperacino oil [made with local Sorrento peppers], parsley and anchovies, and pasta with clams and zucchini flowers at Ristorante Mediterraneo, 100 meters from little pizzeria owned be his wife, 10 meters from a pottery store owned by his daughter and 100 meters downhill from the house he was born in and still lives in. It is across the gulch from us [buried in the picture looking uphill from our hotel] This morning, about 1 AM, I heard a crowd of people break into "Happy Birthday" across the way. I asked the owner and he told it was his son's 24th birthday and then gave us the whole rest of the story....