One of the must see items on Nina's list was Pompeii. So to accommodate this necessity this morning we were up early and waiting at the Piazza del Popolo at 7:30am to meet our guides and group.

Now generally we are not into tours and tour groups but in truth this one turned out to be a good idea. After our three hour bus ride south of Rome to the Naples area we climbed to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, then onto Pompeii for lunch before a very entertaining tour of the ruins of Pompeii

The Vesuvius walk had its sobering moments as one of the members of our tour group managed to fall and break her leg on the sometimes steep and uneven path between the parking lot and the crater view points. A sobering reminder for Nina and I that we need to be careful as we are no longer as young and nimble as we once were. For the lady concerned and her husband and son traveling with her the incident has created some head aches as they were scheduled to fly back to the US the day after the tour. However at the end of the tour she was in a hospital in Pompeii and the other two were in a hotel in Rome.

Our tour of Pompeii was quite a novel experience. It is the first time we have been on a tour that provided the guests with little radio receivers and head phones so that we could listen to the commentary without having to stand right next to the guide. For Nina and I this was a great help in light of our evident hearing loss.

The tour was interesting also because of the graphic detail we were given regarding the conduct of the prostitution business in old Pompeii. The guide seemed to take great delight in pointing out to us that the Pompeii city fathers made it easy for foreign sailors to find the red light district by placing, signs pointing in the correct direction, on the road and sides of buildings. These signs where in the form of a stylized penis and testicles with the obvious element pointing in the correct direction (unfortunately no good pictures of these signs).

The concern for non latin speaking customers did not end with these graphic signs but extended into the brothel houses themselves. In order that patrons could correctly order exactly the service they desired the walls of the brothels had a series of paintings depicting specific services that the girls could/would provide. Thus a patron who could not speak the local language simply pointed at the relevant painting. Pretty much like ordering a MacDonald's meal in a foreign country. The paintings we saw were really quite amazing both in terms of how explicit they were but also because they were original and almost 2000 years old.

There were a number of camping grounds near the Pompeii archaeological site which may have accommodated a motorhome as big as ours.