Tiny City Made of Ashes

Extra points if you recognize the word play (Hipster is excluded from this offer. I know he knows it).

This morning we awoke early, so that we could make it into the city, purchase tickets, then head for the coast. We had to catch a train down to Napoli (Naples), on the Italian coast, and from there ride the local rail system over to Pompei (Pompeii), the city that was smothered by ash during the eruption of Mount Vesuvio in 79 AD.

The train ride was fun. It was nice to see a little of the beautiful Italian countryside as we traveled, and the car we found was compartment seating for 6, so the group split up, eventually into three different cars so one car slept, another talked, and the car in which I found myself read poetry.

Now, I should point out that I am in an odd space, in terms of poetry. Just because it has rhyme, or meter, or is spoken in a slow dramatic tone does not stir anything in me, but I tend to enjoy well written, well read verse as much any man, I think. In addition, the dark spaces between words and lines where evil and good and kindness and death meet and exchange ideas hold out their arms to me and bid me enter, and my mind rushes into them and fills in the most opaque areas with freshly imagined details.

In any case, Bubbles had a collection of her favorite poems with her, and we took turns reading from it. It was a different experience for me. I hadn't been to any 'reading', public or private, since I left Mercer, a year (it seems an age) ago. Later on I began reading some of the darker excerpts of the work Kipling included in the Jungle Book (Nag, come up and dance with death!) which I very much enjoyed. Especially to see my compartment mates squirm and their skin crawl when I hit the measure and the voice just right.

When we arrived in Napoli, we boarded a local subway-style car and rode, standing, out to Pompei on this local above-ground rail. In the car on the way through, a young boy (he couldn't have been more than seven or eight) came through playing an accordion and begging. I didn't have any change on me, and we watched him walk, unwelcomed by matrons and well-dressed middle-aged men, through the next car. At the end of it a handful of boys younger than I dug deep into their pockets and came up with a handful of coins. Funny who will extend kindness and who will refuse to give, isn't it?

Once we had arrived in Pompei we found a nice little restaurant that my family had used before, and had a wonderful lunch. The table at which I sat (made up of primarily the same people from the train car) split five things five ways, and it was a superb meal. The best was a pine-cone shaped rice ball filled with meat, cheese, and field peas. Outstanding!

We already had a guide lined up, a wonderful gentleman by the name of Alphonso, who had done a previous tour for my parents on a past trip, and so when lunch was completed he met us at the restaurant and we traveled on to view the world's best preserved ancient city.

Inside the walls of Pompei Alphonso regaled us with tales of the lives led by the people, the politics they must have played, the things they ate, and the ways they died, all tied up and wired together with references from the Latin language and Roman history. His knowledge of the culture and architecture was stupefying. More intimidating was his innate talent for language. He proved himself to be pentalingual over the course of our tour, lapsing into Italian at the gate when buying tickets, giving our tour in English and interjecting Latin for explanations and details, pausing to greet a tour in Japanese and even admonishing some visiting high school students in French.

I'll include some photos of both him and the city itself later.

Our tour included the Roman baths which were intriguing. The idea of public baths has always fascinated me and I've long wondered if I have the bravery or shamelessness to engage in such a social behaviour. Honestly I think I'm too Victorian at heart for it. The intact sculptures and mosaics were amazing though, and I'll include pictures later.

We visited the Colosseum of Pompei as well, and it was easy to imagine the stands filled with jeering fans and the ring filled with blood and the cries of battle. Being swept away in Pompei is not a long journey. A drop of imagination travels far in such a lush environment.

On the way back, we met the most curious dog. He opened a water bottle in front of us (on his own) and drank from it. I'm not lying. I'll post the pictures of this feat later, as we were all shocked and grabbed cameras to prove it.

Then, like thousands of generations of dogs before him, he dashed off to bark widely, probably at a sculpture or pillar that predated us all by 2000 years.

We left for Camping NSF and QoD and I discussed our various martial arts drills and techniques on the way back. Lots of fun, and it is always encouraging to see someone with such a drive on the path we martial artists travel. I think we frightened the Maggles (If you've read any Harry Potter, you'll get that. If not, go start!) in the cars around us, but they'll get over it.

We were separated on the trip home (Papa Phil and I had some errands to run in Termini) and we arrived at the restaurant where we were supposed to have dinner and none of our group was there!

Thankfully they all showed up in short order, and we had astoundingly good brick-oven pizzas for dinner. As we ate, we noticed that the news above us was declaring that a new Pope had been chosen and we tried to catch what we could, but we didn't really get any more information than that until the following day.