Bernie excavated at the site known as Horace's Villa for a few years and wanted a high-quality virtual tour to replace his existing lesser-quality one, which is a big part of the reason I'm in Italy in the first place.

Arrangements had been made to have the mosaics at the villa cleaned ahead of our arrival on Monday, but that work had not been accomplished. So there were supposed to be cleaned for today, but we arrived to find them still under their protective covering of tarp and soil. Bernie made some arrangements with the site guard, whom he knew from previous time there, and the mosaics got cleaned but the overall problem wasted our time significantly.

Anyway, we made 20 full panoramas over the whole site, which measure perhaps 150m x 75m. The weather was gorgeous overall, with bright sun and puffy white clouds at first, then clouding up and threatening rain later on. Unfortunately the bight sun is a real problem for my machine, and I did not have the luxury of waiting for each node to have a cloud hide it. Ergo, I'll have to spend some significant time fixing the shots in Photoshop, and indeed, will have to learn some more about that program in order to make suitable results.

On the way to the site we had decided that I would catch a train to Pompeii after the shoot, but once we found the mosaics had not been cleaned, and thought we would have to come back the next day to shoot them, that plan got nixed. The guard did manage to get the place cleaned up in time that no second visit was necessary, but there was not enough time to get me to the train, so Monica and I headed back to camp, where we found another thunderstorm in progress. It brought in rather cold air for the whole night, which meant sleeping with the windows shut for the first time here.

During dinner we had a lively discussion about when and how I could make another attempt at Pompeii. The *last* morning bus left at 6:20 am and Dario and Monica didn't want to get up early for that (nor did I want to ask them to), although a newly arrived American geologist named John said he would use his car to take me. Dario called a friend, though, and found out he was off to Rome at a reasonable hour, so arranged a ride that way and no-one was put out. Bernie agreed to let me stay at his place again, and he's coming to the site from Rome early in the morning, thus I avoid a significant hotel bill in either Naples or Rome.

Third time's the charm? Stay tuned.



An overview of the remains of Horace's Villa




Horace's Toilet




One of the mosaics being re-covered after our shoot; this is done to protect it.




A nearby medieval hilltop town, which are common throughout central Italy as far as I can tell.