Naples, home of the Pizza

 Today's port of call is Napoli(Naples). When we booked the cruise, there was no room left on the excursion we really wanted to do, which was Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius, so we booked onto the the trip to Herculaneum Instead, but as soon as we got onto the boat we headed up to destination services, to see if there was any chance we could swap,(we didn't hold out much hope, but if you don't ask you don't get) but a few days into the cruise we had a letter pushed under our cabin door, explaining there has been some cancellations, and we had been swapped over.

 The site at Pompeii is huge and our guide for the day Salvatori(Sal) took us around the what he considered to be the most important parts of the sites, the theatre, the amphitheatre, the forum, the basilica, one of the best preserved Roman dwellings, and a couple of the temples to a couple of their gods.

Sal was obviously very passionate about the history behind the place and went into great details about what life was thought to have been like for the various classes of citizens, living in the city at the time. He even showed us how we would have been able to find the brothel, if we fancied the company of a young lady or even a young man, you simply followed the signs.

I reckon anyone who was really interested in the Roman era could have spent all day in Pompeii, but we only had two and  a half hours, before we had to be back on the coach to head up to our next destination, Mount Vesuvius. We did just have enough free time however to pick up the memorabilia from the little market, outside the entrance to Pompeii, who obviously had a captive audience and charged accordingly for their wares. The coach takes you most of the way up the volcano to about 950 metres and you have to walk the last 250 metres or so to get to the summit. The drive up was a double lane road most of the way, but with us being in a coach and it twisting and turning around sharp hairpin bends it felt more like a single lane road especially if you met another coach coming the other way, which happened pretty often. Our driver Theo certainly earned his money today. Sal obviously wasn't as passionate about walking as he was about history, as he left us to walk the last bit on our own. It was a pretty steep climb to the top, which took about 40 minutes, with a few stops for Perdita to catch her breath. The view into the crater was definitely worth it, but the view overlooking  the surrounding area was obscured be the clouds, which is a shame, but often happens in the lake District as well. The walk down was far easier and only took 25 minutes, even for Perdita's little legs.

When we got back down to the car park, we had half an hour to kill, whilst we waited for stragglers, to get back down,(yes Bare you read that right Perdita had to wait for someone), so we had a quick toot around the tat stalls, and a photo of our new guide with our old one.

Pongo and Perdita signing off after another busy day.