Rome, Day 6 (Herculaneum and Vesuvius)

Hi martyandlyle.us followers,

Lyle here.  I rarely get the keyboard from Marty, but tonight she just shoved the thing at me and said "Here you write today's blog. I have no idea what to say."  So here I am with free reign over what you read today (until Marty edits this haha).

We have had an amazing time honeymooning in Italy. And being our last day it was no exception and we did it in our our typical "crazy" ways.  And in case you haven't gathered this from the blog, you should know we shouldn't be using the word vacation to describe our travels.  Here is why:

We had to WAKE UP at 5:30AM and get out of a nice cozy bed at our B and B to catch a crazy Italian taxi ride at 6:15AM to the train station.  Yeah a whole hour earlier than yesterday. Well we did get up and out.  The traffic was non-existant today since it was Satuday morning. I don't even think the donut people were awake yet. We stopped in the train station at Lavazza for morning drinks. I had a huge cappuccino in an American sized mug and Marty got Coke.  We did some window shopping for chocolates (everything is closed) before boarding the train at 7:15 for a 7:35 departure back to Napoli (Naples).   The train arrived at 8:45 and we went to the meeting point to find our guide, Gioconda.

Gioconda showed up pretty quickly, so we headed for the limo (mini-van).  We had the same driver as the day before. We jumped in the limo and headed for Vesuvius. We had a discussion about weather as the wind was blowing pretty hard and we weren't sure the Vesuvius park would be open for hiking. As it turned out, when we got to Vesuvius the winds were gusting close to 50-60 mph and the park people were still deciding whether or not to open but at least a half hour late. 

So we did some re-organizing of our day and decided to drive back down the volcano to the lost city of Erculano (Herculaneum).  This was a beach resort villa a few kilometers north of Pompeii. While Pompeii is more widely known and was much larger with about 10000 residents, Erculano had only about 4000.  Pompeii was buried in hot volcanic ash and pumice and deadly gases probably asphixiated most of the victims there.  Whereas in Erculano, the city was blasted by an intense volcanic surge (fireball) that cooked the people that where lining the shore waiting for rescue.  Then hot lava and mud about 25 meters (80 feet) deep buried everthing.  In addition, the earthquakes dropped the city shoreline about 10 feet below sea level.  If this wasn't bad enough they had tsunamis flood all of that.

Because of the way Erculano was buried so quickly in the hot mud and lava, an exceptional preservation of the paintings and other relics took place.  They are still digging there today.  We found everything to be quite fascinating and I would probably enjoy helping out on the dig.

It was probably around 11:30 when we wrapped up there.  The wind had died to practically nothing, so we headed back up to Vesuvius.  Gioconda called the park and they said they had opened, so we were on our way.    We stopped for lunch at a restaurant about half way up the volcano.  The place was still empty when we got there, so for a moment we had private service.  The food was not quite that good and the place filled up with tour bus folks, so we got out of there quick and headed up Vesuvius.

Well by the time we got to the elevation where hiking begins around 800 meters, the wind had picked back up to the 50-60mph gusts from earlier, but the park didn't close. So we bought tickets and started on up. Gioconda stayed with the van. Something about the Vesusius alpine guides don't allow the other guides on the volcano, but I think she didn't want to be out in high winds on the top of the volcano.  

We stopped about half way up at another 150 meters and talked with one of the guides. He was a really big guy and it was hard to understand his English, but he wasn't at all interested in going up the windy volcano with us, so we left him behind and went on ourselves.  We weren't the only crazies up there though. And there were some make shift railings around the top. It was pretty cool looking down in the volcano though.  It is mostly asleep, with a one percent chance of eruption, however, there were some hot gases escaping near the inner rim of the crater.  Oh I forgot to mention we saw the solidified river of lava from the last eruption in 1944. That was interesting.

After getting some photos and avoiding being blown up, burnt up, blown off the mountain, and getting a mild case of hypothermia we decided to hike back down. So since we weren't killed I guess we'll add another page to the coloring book.

Once we got back to the nice warm van, we decided to take a short driving tour of the city of Napoli before heading back to the train station for our return to Rome. We saw a few interesting things, but mostly I think we had enough touring and were just ready to call it a day.  Marty was actually dozing off in the van while Gioconda was describing some of the waterfront sites. And we ended up back at the train station with the train waiting at the platform.  Good timing.

So we are sitting here in our B and B, about to go out and get one last authentic Italian pizza.

Then we will be packing up and ready getting to head home tomorrow morning.

Guess what time we get to go to the airport? Ugh 5AM.

See you all soon back in the USA.

Lyle and Marty