Pat Gower Photography Blog: Blog 3 Sorrento-Pompeii-Siena

This is the third blog from Italy. This blog will cover Sorrento, Pompeii, and Siena. The sunset above was from our first night in Sorrento. We arrived by hydrofoil from Positano and had just enough time to unpack, enjoy a nice meal, and catch the sunset.

The next morning it was off to Pompeii. This is a picture of one of the streets in Pompeii. Every night they would flood the streets to clean them. Pedestrians could walk across the street by stepping on the large stones. If there were three stones like this street it meant it was a major thoroughfare. Notice the ruts between the stones from the chariot wheels. All of the chariots had identical spacing between the wheels so they could negotiate the stones.

Up to 9 feet of ash covered Pompeii. 20,000 people fled the city. But about 2,000 stayed behind hiding in their homes. Most of their roofs collapsed killing them. If that didn't kill them there was a pyroclastic flow a few hours later that instantly killed all living things. There is a storage area in Pompeii with thousands of items recovered from the site. There must be acres of stone vessels all in better shape then these.

This guy is having a bad day. There are a few surviving frescoes across the site.

This is part of a 27,000 square foot home. One of the largest in Pompeii. On the floor of this home there were several murals. This mural depicts a battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and Darius III of Persia.

You could spend quite a few hours at Pompeii.

Sorrento was a very pretty small town. It didn't feel as touristy as other places we had been. At night this street was blocked off so pedestrians would safely walk to all of the shops and restaurants. I think someone must have been excited about the Picasso exhibit, you can see them pointing from the left hand side of the picture.

There is an old abandoned mill just a couple of blocks from the main street. It was active until the 1900's but now it looks more like a fern garden.

This is the road up from the marina. I though I was going to see a head-on collision as two cars were speeding toward the curve. But both stopped at the last second.

There is a nice cloister attached to the Church of San Francesco. On weekends they have quite a few weddings here.

During the week they have concerts in the Cloister

San Francesco. While I was taking this picture two Japanese girls jumped in front of the camera and danced all around. They didn't realize that with a 30 second exposure that they wouldn't show up in the picture if they didn't stand still. They were very disappointed when they looked at the back of the camera.

From Sorrento we headed to Siena. We caught a fast train out of Naples to Florence. The train hit 300 kilometers per hour (185 mph) on our journey.

The highlight of our Siena visit was the Siena Cathedral's library.

This is a picture of the Cathedral. The existing church is built on top of earlier churches. Just a couple of years ago they discovered beautiful frescoes in an earlier church underneath this one. You can tour the crypt area to see those frescoes.

The inside of the cathedral is stunning. But wait until you see the library.

There is a pulpit here that is supported by four lions. Three of which are busy killing animals. Not sure what the artist intended here.

The top of the pulpit has very fine carvings in marble. But wait until you see the library...

Finally the library. The two side walls each have five large painted panels. They must be 15 feet tall. The end walls have two large painted panels. Below the panels are music books with pages about 2 foot square. But there are only about 12 notes on a page. As Kathy pointed out there would be a lot of page flipping to play a song.

The ceiling of the library.

The third and last library picture.

As part of our church visit we climbed a tower for a panoramic view of Siena. These two pictures give you birds eye view of Siena.

The stairs we climbed.

I heard that the engineer and architect called in sick so the HR guys, Tom and Dean, decided they could lay out the windows as well as anybody. Here is the final product.