So much happened today, I had to break all the photos into two posts! After Pompeii, we took a drive down the Amalfi coast to Sorrento. All I could really remember about Sorrento from my last trip is that there were lemons, (which means limoncello), lots of bright and gaudy ceramics (almost as bad as Port Merion), and there were these inlaid wood jewellery boxes that were well and truly beyond my means when I was travelling in my youth, a la Top Deck! I also remember the drive in and out of the place, and an incident on the way home from a nightclub where one of our fellow travellers was yelling at a taxi driver to slow down on the crazy hairpin turns and then the drunken idiot decided it would be a good idea to pull on the steering wheel of the car! Yeah Quentin, what a wanker – don’t miss that particular waste of carbon.
Anyway, the drive down today was spectacular and happily devoid of anyone trying to kill us. We did a bit of ‘speed landscape photography’ on the way given there were very few safe places to pull over for photos…
The town of Sorrento is pretty much as I remember… quaint winding streets, lots of cafes, lots of restaurants, lots of lemons, lots of ceramics, lots of scooters and lots of tourists. 
We stopped and had lunch at a fabulous rooftop garden restaurant before having a short wander around town. AuntyMary ordered the ENTREE sized antipasto (it was enormous!), and we had a seafood risotto and some cannelloni all to share. Absolutely delicious.
‘Ciao bella! Want to see my scoot?’ *wink* #WorstPickUpLineEver #PreHashTag
All the ceramics – and there were plenty of stores just like this one…!
Oh and did we mention the lemons? 
Sorrento; where even the graffiti is sweet…
After leaving Sorrento, we followed along the Amalfi coastline to Positano, for more hair raising twisting and turning mountainous roads with stunning views of the sea. The colour of the water in this part of the world is simply beautiful.
You can see the road winding along the edge of the cliff. Our driver obviously knew the area very well, and was confidently cutting back and forth on the hairpins. There was more than one passenger feeling a little nervy about the drive though!
The bay at Positano. 
Positano is a bit of crazy town. It’s another ‘playground for the rich and famous’ type of place, and attracts many visitors every year – in fact, I feel many more than the little town can comfortably accommodate It’s perched on? hanging off? the cliffs with crazy meandering little streets all leading down towards the beach. It’s full of art galleries, jewellery stores, resort style clothing and of course – FOOD. So many cafes and restaurants and all designed to best maximise the view.
Wonder what real estate goes for in this area? Mind you, not sure I’d ever want to live here, the beaches are all pebbles, there’s no where to park and everywhere there are soooo many steps and steep roads to the water.
All the towns along the Amalfi cost have their own nativity to the Santa Maria to keep them safe… 
Such a cute town, and such a building challenge I should imagine!
The amphitheater of Pompeii was primarily used for musical productions. With excellent acoustics, this theatre held about 2000 people.
Pots where food would be stored and kept warm to sell to workers and passers-by.
Walled edge of the amphitheatre directly opposite the ‘fast food’ store.
Typical Roman house. This house however had a few more bits of information that tells us something about its inhabitants. The large plinth doorway tells us the inhabitants were quite well off. The seats outside the house tell us that this is apparently a politicians house – people would come to meet and air their grievances and concerns with the local politician and would wait their turn in the street.
Further evidencing this as the home of a politician was this little piece of propaganda. As it turns out, Pompeii was in the middle of an election period when the volcano erupted, and a good deal of electoral propaganda can be found on the walls. This sign is telling citizens to vote for “Cornelivm”, the man who owns the house above. 
A little further down the street is the House of Menandro. This is a very well preserved example of a wealthy Roman’s home. The entry foyer/lobby has the typical water feature and open roof, designed to create a type of evaporative cooling system, and to catch water from the opening in the roof for a pretty indoor water feature. Off this room would be all the bedrooms for the inhabitants of the house.
The frescos are just remarkable – nearly 2000 years old and still quite vivid. Pompeian Red is a thing because of these frescos. The blue colour is apparently the most expensive colour to paint your wall with as it was made with ground lapis.
The detail is beautiful – it makes me feel we have lost something in the art of interior decor in the modern era…
Further through the house are rooms that would have been used for business, for entertaining, for visitors, for cooking, slave quarters – an entire complex to house a Roman household.
The central garden courtyard is further back in the house, behind the central fountained lobby and bedrooms.
Most Roman homes did not have a private bathhouse, but this home did. It has a small frigidarium and tepidarium for the wealthy nobles who lived here.
Bathhouse. 
I am certain this house is not the only example, but the owners of this house fled the volcano – whether they survived or not is unknown… what is known is that they locked all their wealth and goods into rooms with their slaves to protect them. The slaves in their desperation smashed down the walls in an attempt to escape, but were likely too late to get away. Ash rained down on Pompeii for two days, but the people here had no idea what was happening or how long it would last. At the end of it, the entire city was covered and considered lost.
We went for a walk up the top of a small hill to have a view over the city. Here we got to see the winding streets and how tightly packed the city was.
The view down over the streets was from an elevated position, which we later found out is an un-excavated part of the city. We were standing on top of more ancient Roman ruins that it has been decided to leave buried for future generations. You see, due to Mt Vesuvius’ close proximity comes an awareness that it will erupt again one day. And everything that has been excavated could be destroyed. Again. So they have left a large section sealed as it were for after that eventuation.
All the roads, walls and monuments and frescos in Pompeii are authentic ancient monuments, but there are artworks dotted throughout the city that are modern bronze works based on impressions of Pompeii. There were a few (the large faces etc) in some of the pictures above as well.
This area is the entrance walkways to the public gymnasium, which leads through to a public bath house. More beautiful frescoes line the walkway.
Inside the entry to the bathhouse has the most incredible ceiling, with very fine bas relief styled work. It’s very intricate and would have been stunningly colourful. 
Detail of the ceiling – just gorgeous.
This room is the frigidarium for this bath house. It was for men only. People used the bath houses much like a steam, a hot bath and then a cold plunge at the end to refresh the body and close the pores of the skin… however, it was felt women didn’t have a strong enough constitution for such things, so they were not permitted to use the frigidarium room. The frigidarium roof:
The walls of the frigidarium:
And the pool of the frigidarium:
The other ares of the bath house were two hot bath house room – one tepid, one really hot…
Back outside in the main square of Pompeii with Mt Vesuvius in the background.
Along the left of the square is a large ‘warehouse’ that is open to the elements. It houses many of the ancient artefacts that won’t fit in the Napoli Archeological Pompeii Museum! All these items are authentic Roman artefacts found in Pompeii. Tables, jars and amphorae that held olive oil, wine, that weird fishy paste/sauce (garram? arum?) that Romans were fond of.
During the excavations of Pompeii, a particularly cluey archeologist discovered that they were unearthing ‘bubbles’ or cavities in the ash that occasionally had human remains in them. These cavities turned out to be where humans had been caught in the ash and had died, and subsequently decomposed. The archeologist (whose name I can’t remember) decided to pour plaster paris into the cavities to see what they were and discovered people, frozen at the time of their deaths. Most of these casts are now in the museum and are being tested for DNA to find out more about the people who died in Pompeii.
And then it seemed we were leaving our tour. With a few of us having been here before, we asked the guide if we were going to the red light district, as attitudes to life, love, sex, and death were very different in ancient times and it’s interesting to see how the Romans’ views differed from our modern views. Our guide, Monica, claims was told by her company that we were not going to the brothels as part of our tour of Pompeii. We asked amongst ourselves and none of us had give that directive, so it seem she had taken it upon herself to censor our tour, possibly because we had four teenagers travelling with us. So suddenly we didn’t have time to go to the brothels at all. Bit disappointed for the others, but having been through them before, I was not too bothered. She did walk us back down a street we had already taken to show us a sign that pointed to the red light district (can’t believe we walked right past it and she didn’t point it out… bit prudish). 
The view from Taverna dell’Etna
The restaurant itself didn’t exactly have the most sophisticated decor, but then that is often the case with little hidden gem restaurants! It was late afternoon by the time we got there for lunch, but they were kind enough to stay open. We were so hungry, would you believe – I don’t think anyone took even so much as a single photo of the food!
Views down to Naxos Bay.
Taormina evidences both Greek and Roman history in its architectural style, as well as a significant medieval quarter with castle ruins intermingled with modern shops and restaurants, known as the Corso Umberto.
Lots of higher end shopping in this town, but the only thing any of us bought was gelato and later, more wine!
View from the Hotel Metropole…
The colours of the water are hard to capture in a photograph, but I did have to try… I love these gorgeous Mediterranean blues and greens as you enter the shallows in all the grottoes.
We checked out most of them – the Santa Maria grotto, the White grotto, the Lovers grotto, the Forum grotto and the natural arches. Our boat driver very skilfully manoeuvred our small boat right up into each of the grottoes so we could have a good look. Many of the larger tourist boats that were out for the day with 30 or 40 people on board were forced to hang back and not get too close, so the little boat, small group thing is the way to go here.
After the Pantheon we hopped a taxi and crossed the Tiber to our pre-booked ‘Skip The Line’ English guided Vatican tour. There were 22 of us in the group and we set off at 11am as per the schedule. Then ensued, what can only be described as a sort of organised chaos… or in Aussie parlance – a complete clusterfuck. There was a public line to enter which streamed out into the street and around the corner in the heat waiting to go in – and there was the ‘Skip the Line Tour Groups Only’ line, stretching in the other direction winding back and forth like a Disney theme park ride queue, to get to the point where we could BUY A TICKET. There were people of all nationalities everywhere, lined up in the heat all wearing the same slightly confused, ‘What the fuck is the hold up’ and ‘Didn’t I pay extra to avoid this queueing nonsense?’, look on their faces. We eventually get inside, put our things through a metal detector where a handsome young Italian ‘security officer’ was busy smiling and winking at young girls and didn’t once look at the monitor of bags being scanned!
After that we descended into the grotto to see the tombs of all the past Papi, and the alleged tomb of ‘the’ St Peter. It was a lot lighter, and more museum-like, than I remembered. Actually, felt more like wandering through a long forgotten government archive than a crypt, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me. No photos allowed. Again. Seems to be a recurring theme.
Detail of the mosiac work in this piece… it’s incredible. 
When we came to the Vatican and St Peters many years ago, the old old pope JP2, was holding an audience in the piazza and we went around the crowds who were attending the audience, to wait for the huge doors to the Basilica to be opened when he finished his blessings. When we entered the building there was only about 15 other people in there with us for about the first half hour or so… you could have heard a pin drop and the grandeur and opulence of the Basilica silently washed over us. If there was a god, and if god was anywhere, it felt like he/she was here. I vaguely recall thinking at the time, ‘Imagine how people throughout history, people with no TV, no cinema, no mod cons, and limited education, reacted to this place!’ It would have been overwhelming. It was an unforgettable experience.
Such a very long day and such sore feet… we had our well deserved (second) gelato and called it a night!