This is a follow up blog to the earlier one about the week in Sorrento for my Sister's wedding. I noted in that blog that two days after the wedding, we visited the town of Herculaneum and I thought it deserved a separate entry due to the volume of photos. Well here it is:
We had had a day of rest after the wedding. I had spent it lounging by the pool and then met my Mum and step Dad for a meal at a restaurant near my hotel. We needed the rest because the wedding day had been long and tiring and we would be visiting Herculaneum the next day. Which would also be long and tiring.
We started off at the train station. The train that picked us up was modern, cooled and was the express train. Took barely 20 minutes, so that was a pretty good start. We passed some gorges and shipyards that would have been good to photograph if I was ever in the area again. What really caught my eye on the way in, though was the aeroplanes that were attempting to put out the fires on Mount Vesuvius. They would fly out to sea, scoop up water and then fly over the volcano and dump the water on the fires. I got great entertainment out of that and would loved to have been able to get on one.
Mount Vesuvius on fire. I took this photograph on the wedding day.
Herculaneum was a town that was destroyed when Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. A few other towns were destroyed at the time, including Pompeii. Herculaneum is much smaller and thus a bit easier to navigate. It's a pretty sad story, as you could imagine. A lot of the people fled to the docks in the hopes that the boats would come back and rescue them but for whatever reason (probably an erupting volcano), the fishermen didn't come back for the people and they all died there, hiding in coves along the water. They are still there to this day.
The modern town around it seemed to be quite a poor area. My understanding is that more or less all the towns in the Bay of Naples are quite poor, with the exception of a few that are super popular with tourists. We walked down the hill from the train station, dodging the people trying to convince you to visit their restaurant.
As incredible as Herculaneum is, my fascination lay with the flying fire engines. I kept hoping they'd get closer to us to get a better shot but I'm guessing they try avoid flying over UNESCO heritage sites.
The site itself is quite small. This photo was taken at one edge looking out to the other. There's a bit more that's still under ground but I don't think it was a particularly big place when it was functioning.
Apparently the ash that buried this town was different, or at least had a different effect than the stuff that covered Pompeii so things like wooden beams, doors and food were preserved. You can see it's in quite good condition for a town that was devastated by an unimaginable natural disaster nearly 2000 years ago.
It wasn't as busy as it might've been, considering the time of year. It may well have been the heat keeping people away. I wasn't going to complain about fewer tourists than expected. It gave me plenty of time and space to get a look about and get in close to the detais without being pushed away by crowds.
This photo gives an idea of how open everything was. There really was very little shade. And it was incredibly hot. It was the first time we had really ventured out in the midday heat and it was painful at times. My Sister and her new husband gave up after 20 minutes or so and went back to sit it out. I can't say I blame them. Sorrento is the location of their wedding. They'll be back here one day. Maybe more than one day. I might not be. I don't like wasting opportunity, especially when it comes to travel.
When we were in New Zealand, 7 years ago now, we visited White Island and climbed the Fox Glacier. White Island is a volcanic island in the bay of plenty, off the coast of the north island. And the Fox Glacier can be found on the South Island. Both were fantastic experiences and they're places I'll likely never see again. In the last few years, I've read that both sites have been declared off limits to tourists due to eruptions and retreating. I'll let you work out which situation applies to which site. Now that might change in the future and people might be allowed back on even as I type this but it shows how quickly things can go from your bucket list to your list of regrets (don't keep a list of regrets, by the way).
So I didn't want to miss out on seeing Herculaneum and its stories.
This was one of the few areas in shade. It was the part still being excavated. I only went in as it offered some respite from the sun but was interested to see that work continues. Though judging by the size of that spider web covering the entrance, work has been put on hold for a while.
The next area was the docks. You follow a path down and onto a wooden platform that takes you up to the place that so many of the town's population met their end.
It's now at least 300 yards to the sea from that position so it seems Mt Vesuvius extended the coastline a bit as well as wreaking havoc.
**WARNING** The next couple of photos are of skeletons that were once very real people.
It had been quite a sobering experience. With historical sites like this, it's often hard to relate to the people of the time. The Colosseum in Rome is mostly crumbling, worn away and is about these Gladiatorial games that we find hard to imagine. That's not how it is in Herculaneum. You can see houses, shops and restaurants and can actually stand in them. So it's not this abstract concept of fighting to the death, or feeding Christians to lions for the entertainment of a baying mob.
You can see the day to day lives of these people right in front of you. You can see the water fountain they would have visited (frequently!) and where they would have gone for food with friends. And where they ran to when they were scared. The separation isn't there the way it is with other sites. It felt similar to Dachau in the way that the people's fate was right in front of you. You couldn't distance yourself from it if you wanted to.
After reuniting with the rest of the group, we headed back to Sorrento. We would get a look at day to day life for the modern Italian, on the train. Modern Italian life is hot and sweaty. You can smell the sticky sweat just by looking at this photograph. This was not the air-conditioned express train, sadly. This was the old, window cooled, arrive home an hour and 24 stops later kind of train.
I almost sang with delight when we got off the other end.