Day 6 - Pompeii, Oplontis, and Mt. Vesuvius (with pictures)

Today we went to Pompeii, Oplontis, and the great Mt. Vesuvius. We woke up, ate breakfast, then boarded the bus. We started our day feeling tired. While on the bus a couple of our classmates played some jokes to try and cheer everyone up (it worked). About 15 min. later we arrived at Pompeii feeling excited. We walked in through the gates with our tour guides Jessica and Lily leading the way. Immediately, we experienced moans of excitement, astonishment, and anticipated exhaustion. We started off visiting the temples of both Apollo and Jupiter(Zeus). Both Jess and Lily were very enthusiastic. We then went to see the molds of the dead people which were very strange in a way. From there we went to the oldest Brothel and everyone got a huge kick out of it. After that we went to the theaters where Jess and Lily had everyone make up a skit and then perform it in front of the class. The winners were Derek, Sam, Chianne. After being embarrassed we went to the Arena! There Jess and Lily talked about the gladiators and what they did. Pompeii, a city of great power, held both beauty and destruction within its past. Overall it was a great journey into the past and interesting to learn about.
Our next stop took us to Oplontis where Brekken was our tour guide. Oplontis was the home of Emperor Nero's second wife. Nero being the psychopath that he was, killed both his mother and wife. Oplontis, the house of Nero's wife, is the best preserved ruins from what we have seen. The walls give us an idea of what happened there and how the people lived. Brekken gave a terrific presentation and was a marvelous tour guide. From Oplontis we went to Mt. Vesuvius. We all looked around at the gift shops before we hiked up to the top. When we were ready we started our way up the volcano. It started out hard and steep but got easier after that. After everyone was up we headed back down to the bus and came back to the villa. At the villa we played ping pong ate dinner and talked for an hour then went to bed after a long tiring day.

Enjoy the photos!

Alexander Kaufman and Adam Nehmeh
Tesseract 9th Grade Students