more Pompeii

John tending bar at a tavern, someone ordered a beer from him

Okay, off the soap box and we had 4 hours in this town to hit the Villa of the Mysteries, which is in say Menards in Big Rapids to the amphitheater which is at the Ferris Campus say.  With a ton of things to see in between, a forum, basilica, temples, theaters, bars, graffiti, on roads of huge stones that are waiting to twist your ankle as you walk along and try to read an unreadable 

screw you U of M, yours is being worked on, so I went to the real one

  map to find the thing that you don’t want to miss.  Everything of true interest to me (the paintings and frescoes in the houses) were closed and you were not able to see them with the exception of the Villa of the Mysteries.  I know that they are trying to preserve these frescoes and I want them to be preserved,

an ancient beware of dog entry to a house

 but I also want to see them.  So, either protect them and allow me to see them or take them out and put them in a museum where I can see them.  Rachel’s been saying how the Italian government can’t afford to preserve them appropriately and I can see why when you see the size of the town, there’s no shelter big enough for them and it would take a lot

Vesuvius in the far right of the photo, still covered in clouds

just a fountain in the backyard of no one of consequence

 of money to do it right.  I don’t know what the answer is, but I want to see them somewhere…  The trip back was uneventful on the train, but it was nice to get out of the shadow of Vesuvius.  The amount of crater that was left from it blowing it’s top off in 79 AD is not to be believed.  It’s half a mountain now, but still nothing grows up top where it still smokes and steams all the time.  A peek at the end of the world that awaits everyone.