Travel Diary

An early start! Not ideal, but we do what we must, and I guess I was still on California time, so getting up wasn’t particularly deadly. Today would be Pompeii and Vesuvius. I got the tickets online before the trip. We walked to a hotel parking lot and found our tour bus. For this outing, we booked a larger bus tour, as it was quite cheap. Plus, getting picked up and driven everywhere was nice. No driving or parking to deal with.

The bus ride was about an hour and we were soon at the Pompeii parking lot. Our guide acquired our tickets and told everyone to use the restroom before the tour (this would be a repeated request).

We then took a guided tour around the rediscovered city. Like most tours, it’s nice to have someone explaining all the exhibits, though I do miss the freedom to just explore and photograph things--though in that case, I’m clueless to what I’m shooting. Overall, the tour was fine and a good value. I just yearned to stay longer in some places or see things we missed. But there’s only so much time. And the place was pretty crowded. Summer is a popular place for Europe. And bottom line: I can always return, should the spirit move me.

Once we finishing walking about the lost city, we stopped for lunch. The tour included a small meal. It certainly wasn’t great, yet for bland food to stave off hunger, it did the trick.

Once finished, it was back to the bus and traveled on over to the next big attraction: Mt. Vesuvius.

And this was a BIG attraction.

The buses park partway up and the rest is traveled on foot. Again, lots of warnings about no restrooms on the trail. People had to use the port-o-potty before the hike or forever hold their pee.

The volcano is pretty cool, though not terribly interesting visually. It’s mainly just a long hike, though looking down into a massive volcano can be pretty awesome. As well, there are great views looking out. One can see sprawling Naples, and even Capri way off in the sea. What I couldn’t locate was Pompeii, even though I could see Mt. Vesuvius quite easy inside Pompeii.

We circled around the edge of the volcano about 85% of it. Then one reaches the end and simply heads back. Again, not super detailed. Just lots of rocks and dirt. Yet, still worth seeing. Supposedly, one can sometimes see steam or whatever gas it emits, though we saw nothing like that during our visit.

Back on the bus, it was straight back to Sorrento. Tour fini.

Back in town, we had beers and food. A good day.

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