We're off to the overnight train to take us to the overnight plane.....we'll be looking mighty fine when we arrive in SF two days from now! Recently we took a field trip to Pompeii. Here is RJ's report:

The Most Intact Roman Ruin on Earth

Imagine you're living at the time of the ancient Roman Empire, in the average city of Pompeii. Across the street, you see the bakery. You decide to walk down the long cobblestone street to get some bread. Suddenly, you hear a deep rumbling sound. You look up at Mount Vesuvius, which is looming over the city. There's smoke poring out! Then BOOM! Ash pours over the city, some like hail, some like sand, and some like powdery snow. You're blindly stumbling about the street, while you hear the roofs of nearby houses collapsing under the suffocating blanket of ash and rock. You somehow find the main gates, and you sprint out of the dying city. This is what August 24th, 79 AD was like.

That eruption lasted 3 days, and most of its 20,000 inhabitants were engulfed under so much ash that the city was not discovered for 1500 more years. Major excavations of this historic site started in 1748 and are still under way today. Quickly, Pompeii became the most famous Roman ruin, because the ash that blanketed the city preserved the buildings to look just like they did in 79 AD. As technology improved, scientists began discovering strangely shaped human sized cavities in the ground. After pouring plaster into them, they discovered that the strange holes were the imprints of people who were suffocated in the ash. In some of these cavities, they even found human bones which were in strange positions. The people who died in under the stifling blanket of rock were not touched for 200 years, so as their bodied decomposed, they left imprints of themselves trying to escape. If you go to Pompeii today, you can see two plaster moulds of unlucky Pompeians, which have some pieces of their original bones in place.

Amazingly Pompeii looks like a ghost town, with all of the buildings still intact with an exception of their roofs. The1 streets look exactly the same as they used to, with carriage wheel markings worm into them. In2 the streets are giant stepping-stones about every 50 feet, which allowed you to cross the street at night. They flooded the city every night to cleanse it, because the streets were the city's trashcans. Nobody6 wanted to get wet! In Pompeii, you can visit the houses of average Romans, as well as the houses of very wealthy and prosperous people with frescoes still on their walls. One of the most popular places in Pompeii is the Forum. Although it is the most ruined part of Pompeii, you can still see its importance and grandeur. It used to be the place where Pompeians gathered to shop, talk, and make sacrifices to Jupiter (the roman name for Zeus). Along the Forum there are many places where statues used to be, but they were transported down and put in the Archeological Museum of Naples. Pompeii is definitely the largest and most intact roman ruin on Earth.