a night in Pompeii... at last!

Maybe it's just that I'm getting used to the Winter cold, but it felt quite pleasant out tonight, and a perfect evening to get along to the Night in Pompeii exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. This is the same show that we *didn't* make it to several days ago, when we arrived mid-morning to find monstrous queues waiting to buy tickets.

Today, we rolled up at around 4:45pm and found ourselves in a ticket queue of only around 6 or 7 people... which was just as well, because it still took almost 20 minutes for us to actually get to the head of the line and purchase our tickets!!! Don't ask me; *every* bastard in the queue ahead of us seemed to need some special attention beyond just buying their ticket.

Anyway, after what seemed like 1,930 years, we eventually reached the entrance to exhibition. I was disappointed to find that photography was not allowed (which I'm sure isn't the case in the rest of the Museum).

The Exhibition itself was comprehensive and well-presented, and included plenty of background, analysis, artifacts and multimedia displays (like a 3D presentation of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in August 79AD)... I just wish I could have taken a few pics of some of the wonderful frescoes, pottery and armour. It's astonishing to think that those items are some 2,000 years old, and fascinating to imagine what life would have been like at that time. The information on the archaeological history of Pompeii was also informative, and it's saddening to think of what other treasures were lost to looting and mismanagement before the current controls were introduced over the site.