Day 38

It was another scorcher of a day for sight seeing. The Torre del Greco port that we are staying at is located at the base of Mt. Vesuvious which is the legendary volcano that erupted in 79AD (burrying entire cities nearby including Pomepii and Herculanuem, and expanding the coastline a few miles).

We set out this morning to first check out the famous ruins of Pompeii. We had a little bit of a delay getting there due to a very infrequent train schedule, but luckily this gave us time, while we were waiting, to make friends in the train station. We met an American girl who has been a foreign exchange student in Sicily for the past year, and is now traveling with her parents around the area. She was a wealth of information about Italy and gave us some great tips.

When we finally arrived in Pompeii and spent a few hours looking around the archaeological ruins. It's pretty amazing to see how much of it is still standing since 79AD.









The sun was really cooking us.



After the eruption 2000 people were entombed under eight feet of fine powder.



After Pompeii we got some really good orange and lemon drinks at this stand





and then stopped at another city called Herculaneum where there are more ruins from the same volcanic disaster. These ruins are fewer compared to what they found in Pompeii, but in some ways better because they were found later and more preserved.



What surprised me was to see so much color everywhere.





Mt. Vesuvious today is less active than it was then, and not as much of a threat. My one regret for the day is that we didn't get to go to the top of the volcano. We tried but the busses had already stopped running for the day.



So, instead we went home



and made french toast out of our Italian bread, and had a needed planning meeting for our next destinations. Sometimes during these meetings when we have our maps and all of our books out it feels like we really are pirates charting our course for the buried treasure.