MT Vesuvius and Pompeii

Today I am off to tick off a major item on my bucket list visit a real volcano! Every since learning all about Mt Vesuvius and Pompeii in Italian class in primary school I have wanted to visit this town that was covered by a volcano and preserved history so well.

Mt Vesuvius and Pompeii are located towards the south of Naples on the way to Sorrento. Mt Vesuvius is our first stop I get off at the station and hop on board a mini bus that takes us towards the middle of the mountain.

From here we hand over our tickets and climb all the way to the top. It feels quite barren even though there is much greenery around us. We walk over a large dirt road, but the whole feeling has quite a touristy feeling. It's a little bit steep and there are lots of little stops along the way haha.

As we reach the peak of the summit the winds reach their height and howl all around us. It’s so strong that you have to hold onto the rails to avoid falling off.

The view over Naples is spectacular! The view into the mountain isn’t the most glamorous, it just looks like dirt everywhere, but man is it so cool! You can just imagine it exploding everywhere. And it could still happen, it is only dormant, not extinct!!

After walking all the way around and taking shelter in the small bar / souvenir store I headed back down to meet the bus that would return us to the town. I had lunch here before heading onwards to Pompeii.

I managed to make the last guided English tour of the day – phew! and headed off around Pompeii. It was pretty cool, stepping into this old town seeing where the baker was, the courts, the first pedestrian crossing, the roman baths for men and women, the supermarket and so on.

The funniest area was the brothels where they had pictures of services men could request on the wall. Also in streets around the brothels were penises on the road and walls of houses directing people to the brothels haha.

As per usual they had these beautiful water fountains everywhere so you could fill up your water bottles with fresh, clean, cold water. The only downside was that most of the cool relics and frozen people were in the archaeological museum in Naples, so they only had a few items you could actually see in Pompeii.

Otherwise, it was an awesome day!Read more