Old Stuff

Mosaic
Mosaic
Herculaneum with Mt. Vesuvius in the background
Mosaic
Frescoes

Autumn testing out the facilities


As promised this blog is dedicated to the old ruins that I saw over a month ago...sorry this took so long. So after Rome we made our way down to the south and hit up Herculaneum. This city is actually better preserved and slightly cooler than Pompeii but it is way smaller. For those of you who aren't up on your Italian history, these cities were destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted some long time ago. Because of the lava slash ashes covering everything, they were pretty well preserved and just plain cool.

In Herculaneum I got some amazing views of Mt. Vesuvius and obviously played the Zoolander dialogue related to such volcano numerous times in my head. Now, unlike Hansel, I HAVE been to Mt. Vesuvius. I'm constantly trying to related things we do here to interior design. Let me tell you Herculaneum was a jackpot! I am currently obsessed with having my house in an updated Herculaneum style. Mosaics, mosaics, mosaics; floors, ceilings, tables, walls, you name it. I can see in the future getting myself elbow deep into a- 'mosaic my entire house by hand project'. Those of you who have lived with me know that I would do this. I'll do a tenth of it and then give up and hire someone. But really I am obsessed....I took a thousand pictures. Then we have the whole fresco with reds, yellows, and oranges all over the walls. It reminded me of the stained cement floors at the Theos house. Love love it. So if anyone wants a Herculaneum house...I'm ready to go. This one is for SAC!

The next day we went to Pompeii and I'll be honest, it was hot. Did I mention how disgustingly hot it was my first week here? The only acceptable clothing to wear in this kind of humid heat would be no clothing, which with this BYU group was unfortunately not an option. If i wasn't in shade or being doused with water I was contemplating the positive sides of death. Yes it was that bad. So as you can imagine walking around through dirty old ruins with no roofs was slightly unappealing. But Pompeii was cool, totally huge and I probably only saw 10 percent of it. My favorite part was the casts of the bodies that they have. Once the bodies rotted away there was a just an empty space in the lava of their bodies, so they made casts of them...awesome.

Okay, last day in the south we hit up Paestum. Let's be honest, don't make a special trip for this one. Once again so flaming hot and it was cool, but I was all ruined out and the other places were way better. Oh and I had just been at the beach the day before so the memories of that were still fresh in my mind.