Day 5

Still sore. Our bodies are still revolting from the torture we put them through. Today we took a train to Pompei. It was just as hot today and we still did quite a bit of walking but not as much as yesterday.

We began by searching for a geocache outside a nearby church but we failed to find it because there was a homeless man sleeping right where the geocache was. Oh well. After grabbing some lunch we headed to the ruins.

In my mind, I had pictured Pompei as very small and there not being much left of the ruins. Having taught Social Studies and reading

textbooks and seeing some pictures - it just doesn't quite do it justice. Pompei was better than I thought. I was looking forward to this excursion and it exceeded my expectations.

Pompei was much bigger than I anticipated. We did a lot more walking than we thought we have to. And still we probably only saw a quarter of it. The buildings were in such good condition, it was amazing. You could get a good feel for what life would have been like back then. It was cool to see the individual houses and how they had painted and decorated their rooms.

Seeing the preserved bodies was awesome but also sad at the same time. It is amazing to think about how an entire town was wiped out and how the lava encased them. It was also sobering to think about how these were real people and instantly they were overcome with

death. You wonder how many made it out alive and it they were still alive by the time the lava hit or had they died from the fumes.

Anyways, it was a fantastic day. Jen and the kids finished with one last swim. And Jen and I painfully scoured the streets for a late night dinner. Tomorrow we leave and head to Rome. We really enjoyed Salerno as it wasn't very busy and it provided lots for us to do.