It's all about the guides!!!
All three guides were excellent. Their depth of knowledge was very impressive. The Vatican guide - Maximillian (just call me Max) - has been doing guided tours for more than 25 years and has a very easy and relaxed style. He's full of information about the day to day activities of the Vatican as well as the history, and he presents the dry stuff in a way that keeps you interested. For instance...
Here's a photo of "The Gallery of Statues". So if you're like me I look at this and think... Mmmmmm! But, it turns out, all the statues on the left hand wall are original copies of Greek statues done by the Romans in marble somewhere between 700BC and the year 76. All the statues on the right are reproductions of Roman statues that were destroyed when Rome burnt down in the year 76. See - you didn't even know that Rome burnt down, did you? .... Yeah right!!
Why so many statues? In the day, if you had enough coin you could wander down to the local carver and he would knock you up a likeness out of marble. If you weren't too flush and were stretched for a quid, he'd make it out of limestone. They did this 'cause the guy that invented cameras wasn't around at the time.
Anyway, onto the next tour...
The "Imperial Rome" guide is a professor of history, who had a few other sundry degrees as well, and is 84 years old. At the bottom of the steps into the Colleseum he picks out an old guy in the tour party, ask them how old they are, and almost challenges them to beat him up four flights of 2000 year old steps. No - he didn't pick me: Cheeky!!!
This is The Prof giving us a briefing before we entered the Coluseum. The book he's holding is a history of Rome that he co-authored. He used the book a lot during the tour; it has a lot of overlays in it which he uses to compare what you see today to what it would have been like back in the day. He used the walking stick with the flowers on it to guide people around. Every time he wanted to gather the group together he would hold the stick in the air and call out "flowers" and we would all snap to.
He gave us a lot of info about the Romans and went to great pains to explain that the Coluseum was the cornerstone of society during the time of the Romans. This was 'cause anybody and everybody - including the slaves - had free entry to the games. The VIPs would laze around on the bottom steps, while the likes of me and my mates would hang around the next level. The peasants and slaves would watch all the action from the top level.
Now if you were batting for the other team and got whipped you either became a slave or a gladiator. If you became a slave you had to do as you were told for life - like when you get married. But if you became a gladiator and planted your sword or trident in some other poor dudes or dudettes a few times - yeah, there were girl gladiators as well - you could earn yourself some serious cash and buy your freedom.
There was lots of other interesting stuff the Prof told us about - like, most of the building relics and things you see today made of marble were recycled from the early days of Rome. They went through a fairly long phase where, if you found something you wanted you pretty much just took it and made it into whatever took your fancy. Apparently this is why a lot of the oldest buildings in Rome have marble steps. These were apparently pinched from all the forums (theatres) around the place.
Anyway, enough of Rome. On to Naples and Pompeii. Two of the grubiest places I've seen so far. Every time you turn around you see grafetti - and it's not even nice grafetti - most of it seems to be tags. This photo below is of a palace in the middle of Naples. Pretty impressive, eh? The photo underneath it is of the back wall of the same place.
And right across the street from this wall is...
So the first close up look a cruise ship tourist gets of Naples is...???
Anyway, on to Pompeii...
Unfortunately, the road into Pompeii goes through the suburb of Slumsville - again, not a good look for tourists. Then you go through a little tunnel and there you are - in the most fascinating place in Italy I've seen so far. We spent two hours in the ruins and I could've easily spent two days there.
The guy who lead the tour was named Frankie. His real name is "Frankie the Mouth". He's 86 years old and does the tour three times a week. He used to do it four times a day, which is very impressive 'cause it's quite a physically demanding tour. Here he is demonstrating how citizens of Pompeii used to get a drink of water.
To explain the tap... Back in the day they used lead pipes to feed water around the town, not knowing that it's poisonous. This was why people in Pompeii only lived into their 50s. When they restore features like this they replace the lead with modern day plumbing. One of the Yanks on the tour only listened to part of this story and got into it a bit with Frankie, thinking they were still using lead pipes.
Yay for American Tourists!!!
This is a piece of the original lead pipe. They didn't know how to solder so folded the pipe and crimped it length ways.
Now, are you still paying attention?? Back when Pompeii was buried by ash from Mt Versuvius, a lot of people were caught in the ash cloud and suffocated. When the archeologists got serious about the excavations, some clever dude discovered you could work out the position a person was in when they died by the layers of organic material found between the layers of ash. So, as they excavated, they pumped plaster in to dispel the organic matter and this formed shapes of the human bodies. When the plaster set, this is what you ended up with...
The top photo is some poor dude trying to catch his breath and the bottom one is a pregnant woman.
Fascinating?? Or gruesome??
Now I've got a quizillion photos of these tours and I could go on and on but I know how easily you're distracted and bored so I'll just show you a scorecard for the tour company...
++++++'s
Excellent guides.
Good pickup and delivery service.
Friendly staff - kinda!
Good transport.
- - - - - - - 's
Tour parties too big.
Very poorly planned rest stops and lunch breaks.
Buses overcrowded. Seats far too close together.
No explanation of what to expect when you start the tour.
Every tour is too rushed. Quality would be better than quantity.
Would I do it again?
In a heartbeat - especially now I know what to expect.
So, mov'in on - we're now ensconced in a little hideaway in Tuscany - a whole world away from Rome - but I'll tell you about that later.
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