Napoli, Italy - Vesuvius and Pompeii - 8/19/14

Napoli (Naples) was amazinggg.  We ended up on an adventure up the famous Mt Vesuvius. This is the famous mountain that erupted in 79 AD and buried the famous city of Pompeii (last eruption was in 1944 and you can see the recent Lava flows). The Mountain looms 4000 feet over Napoli and the surrounding suburbs.

  The picture almost looks like two mountains but if you can imagine that, the left side hump is actually the original crater walls and the right side hump is the caldera that formed during the eruption. It is hard to put into perspective how large the mountain really was.

We were lucky enough to be able to climb the mountain up to the crater. It was about a “30-minute” walk up to the caldera’s crater summit. We hightailed up the 1200 feet in about 15 minutes. At the top, you were able to look over the entire bay of Napoli, some of the steam vents in the crater and see Pompeii off in the distance.

Interesting random facts – Vesuvius has caused the land around it to sink down over the centuries and you can actually go snorkeling off the coast and see ancient roman ruins that are underwater. There are also random ruins all over the city that they have uncovered and do not want to destroy such as some right by the boat pier that they discovered when they were trying to build a subway system.

After we visited Vesuvius it was only right to visit the city that it destroyed, we were able to walk around the 2/3 of Pompeii that are currently uncovered (once had 20,000 people).

We visited the ancient Brothel, fast food kitchen, Forum, Basilica, Baths of the Forum, theater and saw some of the original, led pipes and artwork. There was so much to see and take in at one time.

After that adventure we had some time to walk around the waterfront and got some Margarita Pizza from its origin (Pizza originated in Napoli, margarita is the signature pizza). Also, Lemoncello is like the moonshine of Italy and it is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!