pompeii.

Pompeii is an eerily amazing city. I had known the story before, Mount Vesuvius erupts, covers the entire city in molten lava and in effect preserves the city in stone. But you just don't realize exactly what that entails until you walk down the original stone streets looking into houses that once held people enjoying their morning meal before their lives were encapsulated in lava. The city is so well preserved you might for a second think you are on a movie set where every house is missing its roof. It's really cool yet a little bit strange to think about.

All of the frescoes haven't been touched since 79 A.D. and yet they are still as vibrant and intact as if they were painted a few years ago, as opposed to multiple centuries.

There were two major "cult" religions in Pompeii, the Cult of Dionysus and the Cult of Salacia. This is Salacia's temple, where secretive rituals would be performed in order to ensure eternal life for the cult followers. The cult was invite only, and high walls were built to keep all uninvited people from being privy to what was going on. To this day, historians still aren't sure what type of rituals were performed during these worship services.

These are the burial grounds of Pompeii. A lot of people, especially if you were well to do, were cremated, along with the rest of their family and the family slave, and then put into these large brick structures to rest.

The lemons, limes, and oranges that grow in Pompeii are absolutely gigantic, the one good thing about living next to a volcano. There are lemonade stands after lemonade stands surrounding the city, selling yummy lemonade for a mere 3 euro (I actually think that's quite a lot for lemonade, but it was delicious).