I'm sitting on my balcony overlooking the pool at the Villa of the Mysteries Hotel in Pompeii. There's a full moon rising in the sky. The mountains that loom all around the city on the landward side are barely visible in the night. Somewhere hidden behind me is Mt. Vesuvius. When it was still daylight I could just make out the ancient ruins of the old city of Pompeii.

We left Rome this morning at 7am heading south for the region of Campania. We made three stops along the way. The first was a small museum in Cassinno. The ruins excavated there are those which a wealthy widow, Quadratilla, had built and gave to the city as a benefaction. There's a large tomb structure with a vaulted ceiling. A rather large amphitheatre has much of its structure still intact. There's also a theater she had built into the side of the hill. Not much is left of the ancient theatre, but they have rebuilt it and still use it. Apparently she enjoyed pantomime shows.

Our next stop was another one of these castles turned into a museum. It overlooked the Bay of Naples, which was quite beautiful. The museum has pieces that have to do with the freed slaves of the imperial court, a group known as augustales. There are a number of bases there on which would have stood statues, benefactions from these freedman who had become wealthy. Inside the museum is a large structure that would have been the front of the tomb of an augustale. There were a number of other interesting artifacts there.

The third stop was a museum that contains objects uncovered from a villa there which also had been destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79. They have worked at reconstructing the villa there.

We checked into our hotel at about 6pm. Some people went for a swim before dinner. Dinner was at 7:30 and was tasty.

I have a roommate for these days in Pompeii. He's a terrific guy, but it's always a different experience living with someone new. I made a mistake but not insisting that we have air conditioning. It was very unclear about A/C. It seemed like there was a limited number of rooms with A/C. But it's in our room. Yet the amount for the rooms has already been settled. It's probably too much of a problem to change it now. So that's why I'm sitting on my balcony writing this, so I can try to catch a little bit of a breeze. A number of people complain about mosquitoes. I don't think I've been bitten or even seen one. There are bats flying around over the pool, so I think they are probably right about the mosquitoes.

Time to get to bed and see if I can be cool. Tomorrow will be a long day of walking around the ancient ruins of Pompeii.