Nazi's and Pompeii

On Saturday afternoon, Paul, Tash, Donna and I went to see Inglorious Basterds at the cinema. I booked online to make sure we got tickets and this was one of the cinema's that had allocated seats. I took their "best available" which should have been awesome as only a few other seats had been sold. Bah! Not even close. They were too far back. I'll have to remember that for future.

The movie was good though. I liked it. It was a typical, quirky Tarantino flick. Definitely not for someone who doesn't like graphic knife violence though.

Afterwards we went to a Prahran pub, the Flying Duck, for dinner. I had a really tasty piece of pork belly on truffle scented mash. Mmmm...

On Sunday, Matt, Stefania and baby Giorgia came over. We went down Swan St for lunch, then Stefania and I left the boys in charge of Giorgia while we went to the Pompeii exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.

I enjoyed the exhibition. Much of it was about the way they lived in Pompeii - food, shops, businesses, leisure etc. I guess because it had all been so perfectly preserved, there was so much that could be learnt about the culture. The jewellery and frescoes were gorgeous. It's amazing how vibrant the colours were in the frescoes.

There was a brief 3D animation at the end of this section that showed the progression of the volcano and what you would have seen if you were in Pompeii at the time. That was pretty cool. Then the rest of the exhibition was about Mt Vesuvius and it's various eruptions, and the excavation of Pompeii and nearby Herculean. It's a shame that so much of the antiquities were taken before proper archaeological methods of documentation were developed.

The most confronting/disturbing part of the exhibition was the section that had the full body casts. When the volcano erupted, most of the inhabitants managed to flee, but some remained behind. These people were suffocated by the toxic gases and ash. They were then buried by ash from the volcano. Their bodies decomposed over time and left a cavitiy in the ash. One archaeologist developed a method of making plaster casts from these cavities so they could make plaster casts of the people who died in the disaster. You could see these people cowering and covering their mouths with their clothes and some even comforting other people. Oh, it was so sad.

The exhibition finished with a slideshow of pictures of Pompeii as it is today. Wow - it's so beautiful and amazing. I want to visit.

While Stefania and I were out, the boys had a good time taking Myf and Giorgia to the park, before settling down for an afternoon of footy watching. So I think a good day was had by all.

The most amazing thing I've found about this exhibition and Dali is how busy they've been. They're running for 4 months, but both exhibitions were packed to the point of queuing the whole way around the exhibition. If I'd gone to something like this in Adelaide, I would have been one of 20 people in a room.