Where In The World Are Deb and Chad?

We checked into the campground on a very rainy day. The drive was amazingly stress free. It is good to program the kids on long car rides early in their lives I am finding. The campground was outstanding. It really is in a volcano crater. You look all around and are surrounded by the walls of the volcano. The place is chock full of every possible type of sports field and playground equipment, including a mini water park. We looked longingly at all the slides but alas, it was closed (not to mention 65 degrees). Our cabin was two rooms and included a double bed and a futon. It had refridgerator, stove top (that turned out to not work) and a sink but no bathroom. We were the only family staying there the whole time! Ours was also the only cabin that came with a giant mud puddle.

I grilled two of the nights, which is a treat for us because we didn?t bring our BBQ grill from the States. There is just something different about food cooked outside. I bought the orange rolls that come in a can to cook for breakfast but discovered that there was not only no oven but that I didn?t bring anything to cook them in. So, I grilled them. No, really, I did. I stuck four of them in a leftover aluminum take out container and put it on the barbie. You cook them until the bottom is golden and then loosen them and flip them out of the pan, upside down onto the grill. Grill until they are golden on the other side and voila?, it worked. And before you say it, yes, I do know that I am strange.

We decided that since the weather was not the greatest, to just hang out for a day and play at the park. I crossed Rome off the list as being too ambitious for this trip and decided to just do Pompeii. It seems like everywhere we have gone, we decide that we have to go back again. Pompeii was no different. I had no idea just how large it is. It really is a regular sized small town. You can walk across it in a day but there is so much to see that it is best to limit yourself to sections of it. We bought a guide book which outlined three different routes based on how much time we wanted to spend. We ended up only doing about a tenth of it.

We got a certain distance in when Jake had a severe attack of diarrhea cramps. There are NO bathrooms inside the site. So we quickly hiked back out (pushing a stroller over very uneven cobble stones) and made it in the nick of time. The toilets are European port a potties which are very high tech. They are supposed to be pay toilets but these are set up to be free. They are perfectly round - you press the button and the door slides open. You do your business and press the button to get out. The lower half of the port a potty then showers itself off. The whole process takes a good five minutes in between uses, heaven forbid if you forget something and want to dash out to get it. You have to wait for it to clean itself. I had to go in with Jake because he was terrified that the toilet would become psycho and wash itself. Ah, good times.

Oh and we ended up not being able to see the people like we had wanted to - we did see one. I always thought that they were somehow petrified by the lava or ash but that isn?t it at all. I could never understand why they weren?t just burned up. The lava never reached Pompeii. It was the poison gas from the initial explosion, which caught them nearly unaware (they knew Vesuvius was going to erupt and were starting to flee). In the 1860?s, an archeologist came and began to excavate the town properly (it was looted a couple times over the centuries). He found that town had been covered in lava dust and any biological material that was under it had decomposed leaving a perfect hole/impression. He filled the holes with plaster of paris and this is what was left behind at the site. Most of the casts have been moved to a museum in Naples but there are still several there including 13 women and children that were found grouped together in a garden trying to protect themselves (called the Garden of Fugitives). We tried to find it but couldn?t. The whole site feels very sad. You can walk down rows and rows of houses and see frescos and beautiful tile floors, vases, statues and shallow reflecting pools. There are shops and shops lining the two main avenues where you can easily see how the bakery and the different vendors worked. It is definitely awesome. An archeologist?s wet dream. It is now on our ever growing list of places to return to.

So next up for us will be a ski trip to Germany (Garmish). We are very excited about it.