Day 4, Part 2: Pompeii

After our morning tour of Vatican City, we popped into a little sandwich shop for a quick lunch, then drove to Pompeii (the ancient city has two "i"s, and the modern city has one "i"). Pompeii is the ancient site in Italy about which I've been most excited.

Our first impressions of the ruins was that they are frikken HUGE. Seriously, this place just kept going and going. We only had two hours before they closed for the day, which felt a little rushed to me, considering how much there is to see. But, we were able to get a very good impression of what the site has to offer. There are still many frescoes and mosaics there, but mostly the architecture is quite interesting. It was also beautiful to see Mt. Vesuvius looming in the background, as a constant reminder of why the city exists as it does now.

After our evening tour, we drove to our hotel in nearby Naples. This region of Italy is known for two types of food (can you tell I love Italian food??): pizza (which supposedly originated here) and spaghetti (that myth about Marco Polo bringing pasta here from China is a bunch of crap). So for dinner, we ordered 1 spaghetti dish and 1 pizza, then split each. Both were delicious!

Below I've uploaded some of my favorite shots of the ancient ruins.