Day 28 Sorrento

We did 16,500 steps today and they were all through the cobbled streets, villas, temples. bath houses and shops of Pompei. It was a slow run there in the car with heavy morning traffic and who knows why but we got more than our fair share of lunatics driving on the wrong side of the road. When we finally got to the city of Pompei it looked like a cement works. It had a very industrial, dusty feel to it. We were glad we hadn't opted to stay in the city of Pompei. Our impression of the city of Pompei may also have been coloured by the dire warnings we read on the internet about thefts from parked vehicles. We had no issue. Our car was safe and sound in a car park a hundred metres from the site's entry.

Our impression of Pompei much improved once we arrived at the archaeological site. It was truly a wonder. I had no idea how vast the site was and what an amazing picture it would give into the lives of the ancient Romans. Over the next 5 hours we made our way through the 9 main areas of the site, using a combination of the map and a guide we downloaded onto the I-pad. I'm not sure we did it justice, but we had a great time. There was still excavation and archaeological work taking place and the work was painstaking. We saw one woman chipping cement off a surface with what looked like a nail file and small brush. I could never have the patience for this work. We found another guy on hands and knees taking out the weeds between the flagstones laid over the streets. Truly this has to be one of the worst,most punishing jobs I could imagine. Actually it may be perfect for badly behaved year 9 boys who just won't shut up and pay attention.

One of my favourite photos today was of Johnny posing like the statue of the satyr. I thought he carried it off pretty well even though he insisted on keeping his clobber on.

Home was back through the other Italian marvel, the road tunnels bored through the mountains. The return journey took us through two smaller tunnels of approximately one and a half km each. then there was the daddy of them all, which was over 5km. The Italian engineers have my total respect.