I didn’t move all night and didn’t want to move once the alarm went off.  I took a shower and had another great breakfast on the terrace of the breakfast room.

I was the last one on the bus, at 9:15, after checking out.  We drove a few km to the Villa Oplanti, which was owned by a woman named Poppea in 79 A.D.  It is a wonderful example of a patrician home.  Many of the frescos and original paint remain intact.  It was truly a lovely place.  In one part the ash was still in place where the force of the blast has broken down a door.  There was also an Olympic size pool (larger actually [61m]).

Next, we went to Herculaneum (Ercolano).  This town was hit by a series of five base surges during the 79 A.D. eruption, burying it in up to 40m in ash.  Because the ash was wet, the tuff set like cement, making excavation here more difficult.  The preservation is excellent.  The temperature of the ash must have been lower temperature than that which hit Pompei because the wood at Herculaneum is charred in the surface but not completely turned to charcoal and rotted away as in Pompei. 

The bus was picking us up at 1:30 so several of us found some sandwiches in a bakery and ate them on the bus as we drove downtown to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale.  The museum holds the statues and relics from all of sites around Naples.  I took lots of pictures of the casts of people who died in the eruption (see photos).  There are also lots of jewelry, household items, wonderful mosaics and frescos as well as magnificent statues.  I think I took more photos today than any other.

Pascuale took us to the train station and we paid him and bid him farewell.  We left all of our baggage in the deposito and walked about 300m to a pizzaria where we all had an excellent pizza margarita and a few beers or cokes.  We then returned to the station where we waited from 7:30 to midnight for our train to Sicily.