Today I woke up fairly early and walked to nearby Herculaneum. It was an Ancient Roman city buried in over 70 feet of volcanic ash and lava in 79 AD. Archeologists have been uncovering the city for 200 years and I saw a few still working there. It was very neat to walk down streets and into homes that are nearly 2000 years old.
The next stop was Pompeii, a city with a similar fate but much larger. It much be a mile walk from one side of the city to the other. I was expecting to see lots of dead bodies and skeletons, but they were all removed except a couple plaster casts.
I took a break and found a Pizzeria. They had about 40 types of pizzas on the menu, but I picked out two: Margherita (the original pizza – sauce and cheese) and Filetto (cheese & tomatoes). Naples is where the pizza was invented and every pizzeria here has a big stone oven that is wood burning with coals off to the side. It was nice to see them cooking it right in front of my eyes. Came out to about $9 total for these and they were about the size of a medium pizza. I was so hungry I ended up eating both in one sitting. They were fairly simple though, not as much crust and cheese as an American pizza.
The last stop of the day was the National Archeological Museum in Naples. This museum had a lot of the artifacts that were removed from the two buried cities.