As my world tour comes to an end, I meet up with a city who’s ‘coming to an end’ was much more tragic.
Welcome to Pompeii, Italy.
This beautiful part of Italy was originally a city full of summer homes with its highfalutin residents taking a little holiday from their busy lives in Rome.
Without a moments notice the entire city was killed and buried in volcanic ash.
Mount Vesuvius had suddenly erupted and Pompeii no longer existed.
The gases from the erupting volcano killed the residents in mere seconds leaving their bodies in the exact position they where in when it happened, as they were covered in 7 metres of volcanic ash. Then the rain fell, over time hardening the settling ash. As the bodies decomposed cavities of their bodies remained. Upon excavation of the city 1000’s of years later, haunting memories of what had happened were uncovered.
The entire city was preserved along with its people. The fear and the loss can still be felt when walking around the uncovered city. In the photo below, you can see a form of a person who looks to be crying or praying. There was no time to escape.
After such a horrifying day I was left a bit peckish, so I hopped a train to Naples, the birthplace of pizza!
This city is the cats ‘meow’ when it comes to pizzerias. I sat down to order, and as the menu was all in Italian, I yelled out ‘mama mia, margarita’, two of the few Italian words I knew. In less the 10 minutes I was eating the most amazing pizza pie. And as to make my mother proud, it was quite a bargain too! 5 Euro for a pizza that should have fed a family of four.
But I wasn’t done yet. As one can never know when their world might come to an end, I tossed out the last foreign word in my vocabulary, ‘Gnocchi!’.
And within minutes I inhaled the best gnocchi I had ever eaten.
Sleepy and with my pants button popped, I waddled back to the boat. My world tour was over and I sure had made my mark.
Mr. Fab
