I moved very very slowly this morning. Yet again, I was dragging my feet because I did not want to leave a place. I've always loved the beach, the beach has never failed to bring a huge amount of joy to me and to aid me when I need physical and mental rejuvenation (when in Mexico I had a cold that I got rid of sitting next to the Pacific, drinking the Daquiri Del Dia Sin Alcohol), this time was no different. I didn't want to leave it. When James came up to me during breakfast to ask what we were going to do that day I was sad to tell him that we were leaving. James (who's 5 by the way) looked at me, pouted for a short period, and said, "Who am I going to play with?" He quickly perked up before I had to say anything by shrugging and saying, "Oh well, I'll play with someone else! Would you like to eat with us Rachel?" I smiled, considerably cheered up from James, and said that I was going to go eat with my grandparents because we'd already nabbed ourselves a seat out on the patio. James didn't mind this too much and we said our goodbyes and went our ways to eat breakfast and then for him to go to church and for me to climb into the car and say goodbye (only temporarily) to the Mediterranean.
While on the road I worked. We stuck mostly to highways, so for most of the day my working went uninterrupted and my concentration didn't get rattled by my environment. After about 4 in the afternoon I stopped and watched the scenery. Shortly after I stopped we pulled off the highway, following the signs to the Pompei ruins. We eventually got directed into a parking lot where we ended up paying the the man who'd waved us in and where we ended up being taken to the Cameo Factory (Ahmee muttered about them trying to hustle us-I have to say that I agree) where we were told that nothing on the hill lasted and to only buy things out of the cameo factory. For those of you who don't know what cameo is, it's those engraved faces you see on various pieces of jewelry. We got to learn the process for making the cameo, how many layers are required, how long it takes to carve, what the best materials were (specific male shells were the most rare and thus only the masters carved on those and thus they were EXPENSIVE), how to tell plastic from real (the face shines through when you hold it up to the light), and how to tell the quality of the cameo. The salesman told us that those cameos that had the faces of his mother in law (ugly, terrible woman is what he said) were the cameos that were done by students. The ones that were slightly better were the teachers, the professionals were beautiful, but the masters were outstanding and were often very large. After admiring the different cameos for a few minutes we excused ourselves, saying it was too expensive, and went on our merry way to Pompei. Before we went in the gates to go up we nabbed ourselves a guide-book, ignoring what the hustler had told us earlier.
We got our tickets (a staggering 20 euro per person) and went into Pompei where we poked around the ancient city, read out loud the details of what happened in what building/area, and where we walked in the footsteps of thousands of people (some of which we know lived in the B.C. era. 
Ahmee spoke of the different pillars, I spoke of the different time periods of the wall paintings (yes the wall paintings were still intact in some houses, incredibly enough), and we both shared back and forth stories we knew about Roman Gods, about the history of what happened there and how a civilization can be halted in its steps in one night (Mt. Vesuvius's ashes preserved the entire city and it's people, but halted all growth of the city because so many were killed and because so much was covered up). 
Here we also got a warning of what we should expect from Roman roads. It's an ancient principal to be an aggressive driver here in Italy. The drivers of Pompei had make their own room amongst the street vendors, pedestrians, and other carts. Some streets were even blocked to carts (signs with a man carrying a pot displayed this). We didn't get to see all the parts of Pompei that we had wanted to see, but we ended up having to head towards the exits because we knew it was getting close to closing time. We made our way back to the car, avoiding the calling vendors as we went, and once at the car we got back on the road to start heading farther south. After about 5 minutes of driving Ahmee and Poppy decided to turn around and head back to the hotel I'd seen that was right by Pompei. Why did we do this? We did this because: 1) we knew where a 3 star hotel was, 2) it was close to the road we needed to get to the Almalfi coast, and 3) it was right next to the entrance to the A1-the highway we knew we'd need for Rome. This hotel had internet, had good food in its restaurant, and had comfortable beds. We ended up taking advantage of the last two that night, sleeping soundly when we went to bed.
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