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Sunday - Overcast
Today was going to be a busy day indeed. We were going to go to Mt. Vesuvius and the ruins of Herculaneum.
We had a good breakfast this morning. The B&B made tomato toast sandwiches, fresh croissants and Italian coffee.
After breaky we walked up the road to the Pompei site and waited for the bus to the volcano. It arrived a bit late, an hour after we thought it would, but the driver must be running on southern Italian time.
Never mind all is good, we were on the bus and after a few more pickup stops we were heading up the mountain.
It was a tight twisty road leading up to the top, with a lot of close calls. We even had a few traffic jams, but me made it unscathed.
It wasn't the clearest of days today, lots if low cloud and haze, but the path up did offer decent views of Naples and the harbor. It was about a 20min walk up from the car park, the path was steep and a little soft under foot, but nothing a few future heart attack victims couldn't accomplish.
We got a free guided tour once up at the crater, she was a good guide, but I feel she could of been a great guide after she had her daily siesta.
This was my first visit to a volcano, I think. Vesuvius is a big 17000yr old volcano. It has a height of 1277m, and the crater at its widest is 580m.
Since 79 AD Vesuvius has had over 50 eruptions, but hasn't been active for awhile, the last eruption was in 1944. (No lives were lost) However it is listed as the most dangerous volcano in the world, due to it's risk to the 2 million plus people that live nearby. One reason that people still live nearby is because of the fertile soil.
We also got told that exposure to at least 250°C hot ash surges even at a distance of 10km would cause instant death to all of the residents, even if they were sheltered within buildings.
We followed the path along the crater as far as we could, around to the side were we could just make out the Pompei site and the Sorrento peninsula as well as Capri island. We could see some gasses venting out from inside the crater as well.
After the tour and walk it was time to make our way back down to the bus. We hopped off at Pompei train station and had a quick wood fired pizza before taking the train to Herculaneum. Or Ercolano as it's now called.
I'm glad we got to go to both sites, I think that they are two great sites but are two different sites and they offer a completely different feel as well.
Herculaneum along with Pompei, Stabiae, Oplontis and the neighborhood of Monte Bursaccio, were lost in the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius. However unlike Pompei, Herculaneum is to the west of Vesuvius and missed the brunt of the first phase of eruption, due to the constant N/W wind direction of the area. The city was buried under 20m of ash, and because of the deep depth and type of ash so many items were well preserved.
I really like the sight, lots of 2000 year old timber still supporting two story dwellings, as well as timber stairs, beds, walls and ceiling joists. There were lots of beautiful frescos and mosaics too.
Excavations stopped when Pompei was discovered and was much easier to excavate, so more than 75% of the town including many of the cities main buildings remain buried.
Excavations started in the 1700s, and minimal human remains were found. So it was thought that nearly all of the inhabitants of Herculaneum had escaped. However in 1981 when they reached the boat houses on the beach, they discovered 300 skeletons huddled together. They were killed instantly when the clouds of hot ash and gases collapsed into the town.
We had a great visit and after it we caught the train home, picked up some chips, capicolo and had some proscecco before dinner.
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Grandma just love your "Travellers Tales" - all the best - Grandma