Naples Underground and Ercolano

We had a wonderful thanksgiving here at the house.  How made the turkey and I worked on the sides.  We had two families come to the house and join us. They brought desserts and a ham.  Long story, Janelle prefers ham! It was a lot of fun.  The kids ran around and played all afternoon and the grown up just got to enjoy some good company and a glass of vino!

Since we did not travel for the holiday, I told the family we needed to explore some things around here!

Naples Underground was our first outing.  We took the train from the JFC to downtown Naples.  It was not hot and I found a seat, so the ride was uneventful=)  We followed the map to the right square!  We were a little early for the noon tour, so we checked out Christmas Alley.  This is a street lined with Nativity cribs.  The Neapolitans love to decorate Nativity cribs.  They do the usual Mary and Joseph but then they do what the village would look like.  They make all different little scenes of every day life.  There can be pizza makers, meat markets, cheese stores.  They are really quite elaborate.  The girls had fun looking at them and snapping a few pictures!!
We went to the Underground for noon and had a private tour.  It was really awesome.  We went to an apartment that had been an old woman's house for many years.  She even had a cellar that when she pushed her bed back, she could access.  Upon inspection of the house, it was found out that the house was built in the old theater of the Romans.  It was amazing to see the brick from years ago hidden behind layers of plaster.  This was a recent discovery, just in the last 10 years.  It was amazing that there is a whole apartment building covering this old ancient theater.  We then walked down the street to a discovery in the last month!  Another person left their house to the city.  Once the plaster was removed, they found parts of the theater.  It was amazing to think people were living on top of this stuff and had no idea!!

We then got to go underground.  There were 121 steps to the underground.  These were aqua ducts back in the time of the Greeks.  They were used as a bomb shelter in the 40's during WWII.  It was crazy to think people piled under ground to try and stay safe.  There was a huge network of tunnels all built by the Greeks to get water from the mountains to their cities.  There are lights now, but it is hard to imagine being down there with hundreds of people and no light.  We did get a glimpse of that feeling.  For the last section, we had to light a candle to guide our way.  The path was very narrow.  How and I had to duck many times.  We also had to walk sideways in order to make it through.  The path opened up to a big pool of water.  It was really cool!  It was really pretty in there!  It was the perfect ending to a neat maze under the city!  The girls had sort of grumbled about going, but after the last part, they were so excited.  They apologized and said it was one of the coolest things we had done to date =)

The next day we went to Ercolano.  This was just a short drive from the house.  This is a smaller and less known version of Pompeii but Ercolano is more well preserved.  It was truly amazing to see this huge archeological find in the middle of a thriving town.  There were apartment building circling the site.  That is one amazing thing about being in Italy.  Italians are always in touch with their past.  They do not take down old stuff, they just build around it!  Ercolano is an amazing little town.  You can see house and how they use to live.  There is even plaster left on some of the rooms.  The colors of the art is so vibrant.  I can only imagine what it looked like when it was first made.  Ercolano was covered in hot ash from Vesuvius.  It is unbelievable that there is anything left to look at here.  But some of the support beams on the houses are still visible as black chars of wood.  The Roman bath houses are huge!  The girls thought it was so funny that the Romans took baths together.  We tried to equate it to a gym locker room.  So once we found the men's bath, Delaney went running around looking and found the woman's locker room.  She was so proud of herself when we found the sign saying it was indeed the female baths!  A recent discovery at the site is that of a boat.  They found hundreds of bodies in the boat tunnels trying to save themselves from the ash.  They are now reconstruction one of the boats.  It was really impressive to see how they are piecing these chard remains together.  The girls were fascinated by the process!  Who knows, maybe we will have future archeologists!