A Volcano and the City it Ruined...

Yesterday (Thursday) my parents and I got up SUPER early (5:45 am) and headed to the train station to catch the train to Napoli, we were headed to see Pompei. Once we arrived in Napoli we took the region metro like train to Pompei. Once in Pompei, we found the bus stop for the bus up to Mt. Vesuvio. The bus ride was about 45-50 minutes from Pompei and it was up this small winding road. The bus driver honked his horn every time he approached a turn because the road was pretty much one lane.

View of Napoli from Vesuvius

The crater we climbed

The path we up the to the crater

Me and my parents with Napoli behind us

Steam from the volcano

Me with the view of the cities behind me

Me sitting on the side of the crater

The crater

Once we got to the parking lot, we got out and got our tickets to enter the National Park and make our way to the top, to see the crater from the eruption that destroyed Pompei and the surrounding area. The walk to the first sight of the crater was about 800 meters or about a half mile, then we continued walking around the crater finishing at the 1170 meter mark, about 3/4 of a mile. The path is steep at points and sometimes slippery because of the loose rock. While walking you are able to see an amazing view of Napoli and the surrounding area, along with the islands of Capri and Ischia. It was AMAZING! The crater is huge, and sometimes you can still see steam coming up from it. The crater was created from the 79 A.D blast that destroyed the area.

View from the volcano

My parents 

After seeing the crater we headed back by bus to Pompei. We had a nice little lunch in a restaurant right outside of the ruins then headed in to tour Pompei. The city is a lot bigger then I pictured and without a map (they were all out) its hard to find your way around; you end up wandering just looking at the ruins and hopefully stumbling upon things you want to see. We saw some of the big buildings, like the amphitheater, the gym (palestra), some of the frescos (wall paintings) and even some of the victims of the  eruption.

The Grande Palestra (big gym)

Me and my parents in Pompei

The streets of Pompei had grooves in them for the carts to drive smoothly down the road

A fresco (wall painting)

The Amphitheater 

Pompei is huge, tons to see

Inside of the Amphitheater were the gladiators fought

This was said to be a vineyard where they served wine to customers while laying on stone beds, they thought that because of the way they found the people.

Victims of the eruption

View all my pics of Vesuvio and Pompei








After wandering around for some time, we decided that we had seen enough and we headed back to the Napoli train station to catch the train back to Fondi.

We got back to Fondi around 8:15pm. I took my parents to a bar that Lynnea and I frequently go to, Reds. We had a nice dinner and later walked to my favorite gelato cafe. After that we went back to the apartment and fell asleep quickly.

Great first day with my parents!

Italian word/phrase of the day: scavi "excavations"