We conquered a volcano!

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Geo: 40.7492, 14.5007

Well, I can now say I've climbed a volcano! Even though we were driven to the starting point and it was a trail, it was very steep and caused a lot of heavy breathing on my part!

To start off, had a lovely breakfast in the hotel, very nice, elegant room. Lots of yummy sweets, sfogliatella is a traditional Napoli sweet and they had those, delicious! mine had no filling, but they come with all kinds. Had one in Salerno and it wasn't very good, so was hesitant to try it again, but it's big around here so decided to try it again, was happy I did... chocolate filled croissants, etc... lots of sugar!

We met our tour guide at 9:45, not really a tour guide a guy drove us and 2 other people to Vesuvius, we bought our ticket into the park and then he drove us up to the trailhead. I was surprised by how steep it was, not sure why as it is a mountain, but I really don't have lots of experience with that sort of thing. The trail was made up of what looked like very small gravel but reddish in color, not sure exactly what it's called, Karen thinks it's probably a combination of ash, etc.. there was a big rain storm before we got there so it probably made it a bit more stable and not so dusty and moveable which was nice. I took about 40 minutes to make it to the top as we kept stopping to take amazing view photos, then when I saw the "cauldera" Wow, very cool to look inside, it's very steep down into it and very deep, no idea as to the depth. Lots of school kids hiking it and yelling to get an echo, it's the same in every language!

We met our driver back at the bottom at 12:40 and he drove us to Herculaneum, another WOW, it's on a much smaller scale than Pompei by far but so well preserved. It was buried by mud (23 meters thick) and it preserved wood and even some furniture. We saw skeletons of people that tried to stay down by the water to escape but one of the explosions produced heat of about 500 centigrade and they died instantly.

We really had to hurry to meet our driver at the appointed time, would have liked a bit more leisurely look through but it was good to be done also. After 3 weeks of busyness, my body is really tired and I'm very happy I'm not sick. Will be doing some sleeping in (hopefully) when I get home! Right now it's 6:30 and we're waiting for the restaurant to open so we can go eat. Only the tourist places are open before that! So starved though as I am, we are waiting for the place the staff here recommended.

Will update yesterday when I can, I wrote on it for a half an hour last night and then it crashed and nothing was saved! So since it was 11:30 I gave up.

Right now it's 7:24 and I'm off to dinner, will update later!
Wendy

Fit bit so far today: 16,545 which is 7.13 miles

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Comments

[Adrienne]

Sounds like fun! I told Marcus you hiked a volcano and his exact words were "Wow!" with a very impressed face. ?