May 4: Sorrento and Herculaneum

We left earlyish this morning and walked to the train station, about 15 minutes from the hotel, for our trip on the Circumvesuviana railroad to to Herculaneum, which is just a few stops short of Napoli. My Italian was good enough to get us the right tickets and the right track number without having to resort to English. After waiting a bit on the platform, we rode a funky old train that looked like it dated from the 1950s and hadn’t been repainted or refreshed since then. Not disgustingly dirty or anything; just old and very tired. Also covered in graffiti on the outside, which was common for all the trains we saw today. It actually adds a welcome splash of color to the trains, which are otherwise quite “distressed”, like old actors starting to show their wrinkles despite the makeup.

One unusual touch: Italy also has buskers (i.e., musicians playing to earn a few euros), but unlike in North America, they come on board the trains and serenade you for a few stations from the standing area between the cars. Each time we had a group appear, there was a saxophonist, an accordion player, and a percussionist. They were generally quite good, though not to everyone’s taste. After they’ve done their “set”, one of them walks from car to car with a tambourine requesting payment. Then they get off at the next station, change tracks, and come back on the next train in the opposite direction. I contributed a few times, since I enjoyed the music and don’t support street musicians as much as I should. They’re at least working for their money instead of just begging -- which I know sounds judgmental, but so be it.

Took us about an hour to get to Herculaneum, where we were met by a bunch of people handing out brochures and trying to sell us on tours. But there were fewer than I’d expected (it’s still not the high tourist season) and they were all quite willing to take no for an answer. Herculaneum was about a 10-minute walk downhill from the train, and once we arrived, we realized we’d forgotten a potential problem: given the current state of security against terrorism in Europe, it wasn’t likely they’d let us bring in our backpacks -- which we pretty much wear everywhere the same way we wear shoes. And indeed, there were prominent signs stating that no backpacks bigger than a large-ish purse would be allowed. Knowing something about how such things work, I suggested to Shoshanna that rather than checking our bags, we should just play the innocents and walk right into the site if they didn't stop us -- and they didn't. So much for high security. However, we need to remember that we won't get away with this in Firenze. Here's a look at the excavation from above:

Herculaneum from above

Herculaneum’s ruins are fascinating because of what did and didn’t survive. Because the city was buried by hot ash from the volcano rather than the pyroclastic flows that destroyed Pompei, a lot of organic matter survived. For example, archeologists found a preserved loaf of bread, and many of the wooden roof beams and lintels above doors remain intact. So did the bones of many of the people who fled to the docks in hope of safety or escape, and who were overcome by ash and poisonous gases. For example:

A few of the dead from Herculaneum

I always feel a bit guilty posting photos of the dead, but remembering their stories and making them relevant for us now is perhaps justification. Specifically: Given the solidity of the ruins, “shelter in place” would have seemed like an eminently sensible thing to do, but it proved fatal for everyone who chose that strategy. And yet, precisely the same thing would probably happen today. Vesuvius is still simmering, and seems likely to erupt again some day (indeed, Italian vulcanologists predicted an eruption a few years back and guessed wrong), yet people have built homes across its broad slopes. Including row upon row of apartments directly above the ruins of Herculaneum, as if nobody learned anything from the catastrophe. Here's a particularly obvious example of not learning from the past:
Life above the ruins

A surprising number of frescoes and mosaics survived, many quite beautiful. For example, here's one of Hercules:

Hercules fresco

There are also many large expanses of colored plaster still clinging to the walls, though presumably most of the plaster was cooked off the walls by the fall of hot ash. With a little imagination, you can see Herculaneum the same way its people did, colored even more eclectically than the colored-plaster walls of modern buildings in southern Italy. This is one of the things it took me many years to realize: what we’re seeing in ruins isn’t what the inhabitants saw. Most people, like I did before coming to this realization, probably leave and think that it’s odd that the ancients didn’t know about paint and had no taste for color. In fact, most of the stucco and plaster has long since fallen, taking all the color with it. From what remains, the city must have been beautiful. Here's an example of some of the old color:

Colored walls

Dinner tonight was at Ristorante San Antonio, just down the road from our hotel. I had two pasta dishes (to the amusement of the waiter -- the standard approach is to start with pasta and finish with fish or meat): the primi was thick spaghetti with a tomato/bacon sauce, and the secondi was sciataglielli noodles with swordfish and eggplant, plus a savory sauce almost like a gravy. Shoshanna started with hollow noodles like giant penne with “red rock fish” as her primi, and concluded with a luscious pork chop. I had a new beer (Perone Rosso), which is the best I’ve had in Italy; Shoshanna had a half liter of the house white. Italian wine continues to impress me: we haven’t had a bad wine yet.

Tomorrow, we leave for Firenze, and are looking forward to spending four nights in the same place. More later!

May 5: Travel to Firenza