I'm arranging monthly surprises for Mick right the way through 2026 as it was his 60th birthday in August. I'm a little late in telling you about his September surprise as it actually ran over into October.
I knew that Mick had been wanting to visit Pompeii so I thought it would be a nice surprise to arrange a holiday to nearby Sorrento. This is one surprise which Mick knew about in advance as I wanted him to have the enjoyment of looking forward to the trip. I did keep it a secret until his birthday, I'd wrapped up a guidebook which I gave him to open and that's when I told him we were going to Sorrento. We flew out from Manchester on the 27th of September for a week.
I'd been tracking the weather and it was in the high 30s through August. I chose the time of year for our visit based on the predicted temperature, I knew it would be no fun at all exploring Pompeii in the extreme heat. As it was, it was still in the high 20s when we visited, still quite hot but I'd booked a hotel where we could relax in between our excursions.
We stayed just outside Sorrento in Sant'Agnello, a quiet clifftop town overlooking the Gulf of Naples. It was close enough to walk into Sorrento but the hotel provided a good shuttle bus service which ran at various times throughout the day. It was very handy. The train station was just a short walk away so this was handy for exploring further afield.
There was a lift to take you down to the small public beach but we ventured down the ramps and stairs, winding our way through the tunnels cut into the cliffs, and used the lift to take us back up again.
We arrived last Sunday and, wasting no time, set off to visit Pompeii on the Monday. We didn't book any organised trips on our holiday, we just used public transport hopping on and off trains and buses as required and it was so easy.
I can't begin to tell you how vast Pompeii is and how much there is to see there. I was speaking to someone who had visited three times and each time they choose a different part to explore. That would definitely be the best way to do it if you knew you were going to return, but as we only had the one day we did as much as we could but only really touched the surface. The one thing we did notice was how Vesuvius looms over Pompeii, it must have been terrifying for the people when they realised it was erupting.
The city of Pompeii was buried under nearly twenty feet of ash, pumice and pyroclastic flows when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. It wasn't rediscovered until 1748 and it's remarkable how well the buildings have been preserved.
An invention of modern times being viewed through the skylight of Casa degli Amanti, or House of the Lovers.
The Teatro Piccolo, or Small Theatre. Holding 1300 to 1500 spectators I wouldn't exactly call it small but there's a large theatre too, the people of Pompeii certainly enjoyed their leisure activities.
The Amphitheatre of Pompeii was the most impressive building of all for me. It measures 135m long and 104m wide and was built to host around 20,000 people.
Inside, the amphitheatre is just as striking. It was poignant standing there thinking of the gladiators who fought and died there.
And the tunnels through which the gladiators were led into the arena.
There's lots of artwork to see in Pompeii, this on the wall of one of the brothels. Yes, there were brothels in Pompeii, quite a lot in fact.
But I think the thing people think about most when they visit Pompeii are the people who died in the disaster. When hot ash and pumice buried the city, it completely encased the victims. The bodies completely decomposed over many years and what was left behind were cavities inside the hardened ash which mirrored their final shapes. In 1863, an archaeologist invented a method in which to pour liquid plaster into the cavities and once hardened the surrounding ash was chipped away to reveal the final shapes of the victims.
It's heart wrenching to see how people were trying to protect themselves. Most of the victims died from breathing in a dense, choking cloud of hot ash and poisonous gases, others died from thermal shock from the high temperature pyroclastic flows and others were crushed inside buildings or hit from falling masonry or killed from earthquakes which were happening at the same time as the eruption.
The saddest of all are the casts of the children.
The excavations at Pompeii are still active. About 15% to 33% of the city is still buried so work to uncover more will continue for many years.
I think I'll leave it there for now and I shall tell you about the rest of our holiday in my next post.
Pompeii is somewhere Mick's wanted to go for a long time and it didn't disappoint, there's just a taster in this post. We spent the whole day there and we could go again and spend another whole day seeing things we haven't already seen, it's huge, but so very interesting.
