Pompeii and Sorrento

Today we left Rome and continued our journey south. It is getting noticeably warmer with the temperature getting up to 31 degrees at one stage.

We took the autostrade past the town of Cassino and its famous monastery on top of the hill. This was completely destroyed in WW2 but rebuilt afterwards.

Next stop was Pompeii. In 79AD the whole town of about 20,000 people was covered by 3m of rock and 2m of volcanic ash all blasted out of nearby Mt Vesuvius. There were lots of warning earthquakes before the big eruption but volcanology was not really a thing back then so no one took much notice.

There was so much debris from the eruption it moved the shoreline 2kms west so when everything settled down again and people came to try and find Pompeii they couldn’t so it was left as a snapshot of first century Roman life until it was rediscovered and excavations started in the 1700s.

Our guide took us around showing us some of the key buildings. In true Roman fashion it had running water thanks to an aqueduct and the streets were well built. We visited the brothel which had some interesting frescoes as well as a rich person’s house, a bath, and the main piazza.

Afterwards we continued our journey to Sorrento with a short stop off at a limoncello factory - really nice!

Our hotel has views across to Naples, Vesuvius, and Pompeii so it was tough having an afternoon drink.

After dinner we went to a small theatre for a performance of local folk dancing called tarantella. Very good and very entertaining.Read more