Collecting UNESCO Wold Heritage Sites: NAPLES & POMPEII

Diving into history is good. Diving into history and being personally on the spot in the Italian region of Campania is very good. That is exactly what me any my mom did during a long weekend spent in Italy between 18-21 of July.

I was more disappointed than I can describe when it turned out that the planned one-week girlish camp in South Italy had been cancelled. I was so prepared and so decided and engaged with Italy so I checked the actual possibilities and finally chose Napoli and Pompeii as a destination. Although, my original plan was to keep the girlish nature of the holiday and invited a couple of girls but when it became serious, nobody wanted to join, except my mom. 

Walking up and down on the streets of Naples, finding the famous buildings and key spots, tasting the world-famous Italian ice-cream, drinking limoncello, being witness of several weddings, buying gorgeous PEACHES, trying the public transportation, seeing roaches and rats in the harbour in the evenings, founding the town itself rubbishy, experiencing the endless helpfulness of the local people, founding the policemen really handsome, seeing the thermometer showing 42°C at 6PM are those things that I will never forget. 

Watching the movie of Pompeii in the air while approaching (and leaving) Italy is a splendid engagement and superb way to be prepared from the history of the city which gives deep impression about the happenings in the past. Pompei, along with Herculaneum was mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 m of ash and pumice in the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. An estimated 16,000 people died then. The objects have been well-preserved for centuries 

because of the lack of air and moisture. These artifacts provide extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of the city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies. This allowed one to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died. So awe-insipring and poignant.

Although, the serpentine row at the entrance of the ruins in the heat was a bit depressing at the first sight but tanked up with melone made it bearable. Being watchful and discovering another "fast way" to enter is a chance if return ever.

Pompei tour can be complete if you can combine with a tour to Mount Vesuvius. Monte Vesuvio is the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted within the last hundred years. Today, it is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world because of the population of 3,000,000 million people living nearby. That area was declared a national park and there is a spiral walkway around the mountain to the crater. Of course, we climbed. Thank God, buying

a sunshade to my mom was an excellent decision that eased to bear the heat while walking up and down the tuffs. And what a view unfolded on the top! Undescribable.

Walking several kilometers during two days made me to spare my mom and slow down on our last day. We looked for the only beach (Mergellina) suitable for swimming in Naples (the cost is predominantly for harbours) and spent the whole day with sunbathing, swimming and relaxing. 

I came to like the catching Italian words, accent and speech. Buongiorno, Molo Beverello, Piazza Garibaldi, Corso Umberto, allora, ciao bella and others that all tempt me to learn Italian. And a couple of things remained that also tempt me to return like the island of Capri (approaching by hydrofoil) with Grotta Azzurra (sea cave), and the real pizza (evolved from Naples in the 18th century) and pasta...