Mount Vesuvius and Pompeii

Another early morning start, we make our way to Napoli centrale for breakfast and meeting point for our next tour - hiking up Mt Vesuvius and walking the streets of Pompeii.  Knowing what the kids have done on this trip so far, I have every faith they will conquer this mountain, but I'm suffering a little from the intensity of the heat.  Not drinking enough fluid, I'm the slowest up the mountain.  Gareth has done his usual and half pulled half carjouled Kaia up the track, while Zach does it with a spring in his step.  I am grateful they changed up the itinerary and we do the trek in 30 degrees rather than the 33 it will be by the afternoon.

The view is something amazing.  There is not a cloud in the sky, but a band of sea haze, and the water is so bright blue set against a city that seems to be meeting the sea in a cloak of beige.  When you reach the first hut (complete with a bar for coke or wine) you see the lip of the crater and get to stare into the vast hole at the center of the volcano.  And it's made all the more impressive as you trek to the next set of huts each with an assortment of drinks, and a team of people to tell you all sorts of facts about the volcano and its history in many different languages.  Just like everything in Italy, some of the safety fences to stop you going in the crater or over the edge of the volcano are either broken or missing so I have to remind the kids not to lean on them.  Just because we can, we walk to the last hut to take a view over what is potentially Pompeii before we have to start our descent back to the bus before it leaves.

On the way down we stop at a shop that gives us samples of limoncello and the most enormous lemons i’ve ever seen.  The dude put the lemon up to his head - and it is literally the size of Kaia’s head.  We also get the taste of the lemon that goes into his Limoncello complete with the rind - and its got a very sweet taste for a lemon.  Unfortunately I don’t think his brew is great but I quite like the skull carved from volcanic rock so I take that home instead.

Things in Italy don’t really seem to run too efficiently with the exception of where we have lunch.  As we walk down the drive to the restaurant, the driveway is covered by a canopy of vines complete with grapes growing on them.  We are seated, and we watch as 3 guys with 2 pizza ovens prepare and cook 50 margherita pizzas in record time.  If you haven’t cottoned on yet, we have eaten A LOT of pizza, and at this point, I miss fish and chip takeaways so much.

Off to Pompeii after being rehydrated and fed, we wait for our tickets under a massive canopy, made this time of snowpeas, dangling above us.  What I thought I was going to see of Pompeii was very different from the actual site.  Way exceeded my expectations.  Often photos you see are of the ruins in the main square, but when you walk down those streets, walk into some of the houses where you can still see the colour in the frescos on the walls.  In the market, you can still see where the stall for the bread and fish was.  Naturally of course, a town wouldn’t be complete without its red light district, and if you were a visitor to Pompeii looking for a good time - don’t worry their street signs have you covered.  They carved dicks on the walls and on the ground to indicate the area.  I just didn’t expect to be immersed in a city more than 2000 years old so well preserved and restored, dicks and all.

Grateful that this tour finishes on time, we go looking for dinner, and as in a previous post this is where we really understood we were staying outside of a tourist area, we couldn’t find anywhere close to eat and made our way downtown towards a Japanese restaurant, totally over pizza at this point.  Only its a Japanese restaurant on the door but definitely doesn’t serve it. More some sort of southeast asian food.  So after Gareth gets the negative vibes, we end up at a pizza restaurant across the road.  None of us order pizza, and we are finally full, tired and need to go home to pack to leave for Bari the next morning.  I go to pay the bill and the waiter keeps saying to me, the bill does not include tips, and I say to him, I don’t care, I'm not american.  So the filthy look we give each other as I leave shows neither of us likes each other haha.

As we walk up the street we get treated to a bit of live jazz in a square, but we know we all need to get home.  It's after 10pm by the time we get home, we need to get up early, and I know we are all going to be some shitty people in the morning.  Roll on downtime in Bari.