Visiting Pompeii was a neat experience. The kids grew up reading the stories in school about Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius. Now, they can see the real thing.
I'm not sure why I was surprised at the size of Pompeii. I knew in my head that it was a city, but for some reason I never really pictured it as being a large place.
Several times we were able to see the casts that were made in the discovering of Pompeii.
The pictures are a little out of order. This is the drive from Mt. Vesuvius to Pompeii
exploring Pompeii
some of the doors were quite small, others were large
an oven
The crosswalks. They had raised stones to denote crosswalks. The stones were separated just right to allow for the wheels of the chariots to still go through.
Katherine thought the water fountain was great ;)
Lauren exploring
We all sat to rest for a minute before continuing on. This house had columns and a private garden.
I believe they said that the taller crosswalks denoted that chariots could not go through, making the street behind a walking street.
mosaic tile floors...it's how you knew if the person was wealthy
Hudson was looking for the mosaic tiles and the painted walls the entire time. He wanted this picture to be able to show his class. They have been studying this.
More mosaic tiles...what a large house!
a restaurant
When you saw restaurants like this, it was for takeout
The holes in the countertop are thought to be how they verified the amount of payment. The different coins would fit in different holes to measure.
The forum where all teh trade and business would happen (Mt. Vesuvius in the background)
Pretty amazing how big of an explosion this must have been!
This was formerly a temple to Apollo
I love some of the artwork that has been found. It's so interesting. They are still working on excavating many sections.
Here you can see the ruts in the road from all of the chariot traffic.
A large oven
I'm not sure what this is, but the side of the building had detail work that many of the other buildings did not.
Written in stone
more casts
So, this is where our day took a turn. Hudson had been saying that he was hungry and tired. We were headed to the exit so that we could get some food when he passed out. We sat down here to try to let him recover. I thought maybe his blood sugar had dropped or something. I went to the ONLY store in Pompeii (so prices were not cheap) and bought some donuts and croissants and water. After a break and Hudson doing a little better, we tried to keep going to the exit so we could get real food.
He just couldn't make it. Regan started carrying him, but he just couldn't breath well and had zero energy to hold on.
We stopped again and this time he just couldn't catch his breath or move well. He kept saying that he couldn't feel anything. So I went back to the clinic in the center. The paramedics came to check him out.
They said his O2 level was only 70 and they needed to take him back to the clinic.
They carried him back.
While inside, they gave hime 100% O2 for 15 minutes (he wasn't thrilled about this because he said it hurt his nose) and an inhaler.
The kids and Jonathan waited outside the clinic. Regan was so worried about her little brother. I'm sure it was nerve racking not knowing what was going on inside the building.
After they got his O2 levels back to normal, they transported him through "the city" like this until we reached the outer edge where the ambulance was waiting for us. By the time we got to the ambulance, he was starting to look and act more like Hudson. Even though he was feeling better, they wanted to transport him to the hospital to get checked out by a pediatrician.
The cast of the dog
This is now my THIRD ambulance ride in 2 foreign countries! (1 with Grandmommy, 1 with Jonathan in China, and now 1 in Italy with Hudson)
The paramedic in the ambulance was so sweet...and BONUS...she spoke a little bit of English!
Earlier that morning Hudson said he REALLY wanted to see the inside of an ambulance. I told him that this was probably not the way to do that :) He was feeling quite a bit better and enjoyed his right FLYING down the streets of Italy with the sirens blaring
At the hospital, they checked everything! They checked his blood sugar, blood tests, Covid tests, EKG, echo of his heart, etc. All came back normal! So, the diagnosis? Asthma attack. Here we are waiting to be released.
They brought him food while we waited....pasta, an apple, and orange, potatoes, and bread and water.
About to have his echo...so thankful that ALL of this was free of charge, including the ambulance ride! I'm not sure if it's because it happened inside a national park or what. I didn't want to question it too much ;)
When we left the hospital, a sweet lady (a friend of the nurse) drove us to meet Jonathan and the other kids. From there, we got some McDonald's and waited for the train back to Naples.
We arrived late. Tired and sleepy. But it was a good day filled with lots of memories!
