Pompeii is overwhelming.  This city, which was captured because of the preserving ashes of the nearby volcano Vesuvio, shows a very different time of human culture.  Strolling through the maze of stones and rubble, I find myself trying to imagine this other time.  The hoards of tourists do not help, and I am reminded when my dad and I visited Jerash in northern Jordan, which was also an unreal and expansive exhibition of Roman ruins but without a tourist in sight.  Pompeii and Jerash are on two different scales in terms of grandeur; however, given the lack of other human life when walking through the ruins of Jerash, it was a bit easier to transport myself to that earlier time thousands of years ago.