A Step Back through Time

After daringly navigating the European trainsystem, we arrived this morning at Herculaneum, one of R's favorite sites in the entire world. Far less famous than the world-renowned Pompeii, Herculaneum is a seaside city that was also covered and preserved by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. But whereas Pompeii was overrun by lava, Herculaneum was filled with ash and soot and then covered by mudslides, leaving it much better preserved. Visiting it is like stepping back in time -- there are whole houses still intact, an ancient Roman "Starbucks" on every corner, and beautiful art and artifacts that perfectly preserve a moment in Roman history. And best of all, there are almost no crowds, since everyone is hanging out at the much less impressive Pompeii.

Side note here: We had lunch at the Gladiator Bar/Restaurant in Ercolano, the surrounding town. The service was fabulous, and our server Suzy was very patient with our botched attempts at ordering in Italian. And the food was phenomenal!! Suzy brought us bruschetta on the house, courtesy of the manager Luigi, and from there we had fresh mozzarella and every type of seafood we could think of. The kids all ate until they were stuffed!!

D: We woke up earlier than usual today- almost seven! We had to prepare for a train ride, but arrived at the station to early and had to wait for a while. The train ride was about two hours, and we arrived at lunch. We are at this amazing cafe. The waitress was super nice, and the food was delicious. I ended up eating a whole squid! We toured the Herculaneum for about two hours, looking at the leftover frescoes and beautiful mosaics that had survived thousands of years and tons of shifting dirt. After that, we headed home (with gelato of course). Today's flavor: chocolate and some unidentifiable other ingredient. All of the flavors were written in Italian, and R accidentally ended up ordering hazelnut (which isn't her favorite).

S: We went to the train station and we spent about like 5 hours on the train total. After the first two trains we went to Herculaneum and we saw about all of it. It was so old and I   found some shells. Of course, I did not get to keep them. After though, me G and C were a group of excavators and we were moving rocks. Then of course C was so dirty he was covered in dust and dirt. So R cleaned up C. He was not happy. Then he saw pigeons. Then, he started to chase them! Since I'm his sister, I started to chase them too.

G: We saw some houses and there were some frescoes in the houses. Some of th houses were pretty nice, and the floors were decorated and stuff. I saw some old Roman shops, and markets. We also found some dig sites. Some houses still had roofs, but there were also some houses with no roofs. There were also lots of rooms. I saw some pretty awesome stuff at Herculaneum! Also, I tried some squid, shrimp, and swordfish at lunch today. And I had chocolate-orange gelato for dessert!

C: This house is messy. This rock fell down... I put it over here. This rock go here. So much dirt. Dirt dirt dirt! Look... a stick! My stick! Mine!!!! Oh. Stick broken. Stick for you.