Day 5: Thursday 25th October

Thanks to Leo Jewell, Henry Lewis and Hugo Jenkins for Thursday's blog entry

Wow - this was another fascinating but tiring day. We were told that the main road between Sorrento and Pompeii was going to be closed at 9.00am for road works so we had to be up and out of the hotel by 8.00am! This meant an early (7.15am!) breakfast.

Despite the road works we got to Pompeii quite early which meant we had a lot of time to look around the town. The first thing we saw was the Necropolis which was on the main road into the town, but outside the city walls. Only the rich people could afford for all their family to be buried together in this street and some of the tombs were as big as temples, with statues of the dead people on the outside.

When we got into the town we went to see the Amphitheatre which is where there were gladiator contests. Mr Allen got us all to walk through the main entrance like gladiators and give a traditional salute 'Nos moraturi te salutamus' (we who are about to die salute you). Then we got to see where the lions would have been released from.

We got to see loads of stuff in the morning after that. Mr Bury pretended he was a barman in one of the street-bars and Mrs Green was the waitress. She would be the only woman allowed in the bar! We also went to the house of Stephanus - Mr Allen's description of how he got clothes clean made us all feel a bit funny, but his house was quite big so he was obviously doing quite well out of it. One of my favourite bits was looking round the bathhouse; there was a new bit that the teachers hadn't seen before which showed the hypocaust system used for heating the floors and walls. There were also some of the plaster casts of bodies buried beneath the lava - it was fascinating to see them knowing how they had died.

After a quick comfort break we went onto the 'Teatro Piccolo' which means 'little theatre'. Alex got up and did a little dance which was very funny but very short, before we went onto the 'Teatro Grande' - this was the main theatre in Pompeii and was much bigger. However it had been designed really cleverly because when Mr Allen and Hugo were at the bottom and we were at the top you could still hear them properly.

We had time for a short lunch stop before we were off again. The excitement was building as we got closer to seeing Caecilius' house. Before we got there we went to see the 'House of the Fawn' which Mr Thomas remembered from last time - he said it was superb and he wasn't wrong! It was an enormous house with a lovely, big garden and some really intricate mosaics.

We looked through some more houses and temples then we went to the 'naughty house' where Caecilius and his friends would get up to irresponsible things where their wives couldn't see! Then we got to the high point of the trip - Caecelius' house; and Mr Allen broke the news to us that actually Caecilius was a fictional character and his family were all fictional too! There were wails of disbelief, although Mr Allen did tell us that all the characters were based on people that may well have lived in Pompeii at that time.

From here we went to the Forum which was really impressive and made us wonder at how magnificent the forums in Rome might have looked if Mussolini hadn't built a main road straight through Augustus' forum! We finished off in the basilica where we heard about the law courts and how Caecilius would have prosecuted anyone how owed him money.