Herculaneum: Exiting Thoughts

 And so it ends...a full day of touring the ruins at Herculaneum. We head for the bridge out of Herculaneum.

 Nikki takes the headphones back to the kiosk where we got them and we sit on the bench for a well deserved rest.

This is what it looks like from the bench if you look towards the coast. A bunch of maintenance buildings and the bookstore just out of view in the building on the right.

The air conditioning ductwork visible on one of the buildings.

A modern upright air conditioning unit that can be found, usually mounted to a wall and not on the roof, on virtually every home and business in Italy.

 And so it is. After reading and studying Pompeii and Herculaneum for over 20 years, I finally have had the opportunity to see Herculanem myself. Was it worth the trip? Absolutely without hesitation, yes. Did it feel like I had expected? Somewhat, but not entirely.

 I had not anticipated the surrounding area feeling quite like it did. The apartments built right on the lip of the excavation. The city noises wafting into our tour. And especially, the insights that modern day Ercolano and Naples gave me into what life must have been like in Herculaneum.

For in many ways, Italians in this area live quite a bit like their ancestors of 2,000 years ago. Mount Vesuvius stills looms large and shrouded in clouds. Tightly clustered buildings with very little privacy. Clothes lines hanging from every single residential building. Graffiti an absolutely huge problem with something scrawled on most buildings. Narrow streets with somewhat questionable sanitation in some areas (Naples has had famous sanitation strikes for years, ongoing to this day, whereby trash can remain in front of a residence for weeks). And a very ornate taste of style, with a color or a texture or a character line covering every wall and every piece of furniture. Look into the faces of the Italians you walk by in Ercolano and I guarantee you, you're seeing a face just like what walked the streets of Herculaneum 2,000 years ago. The past lives, if you look closely.