CS and W went up the hill...

to eat a pot of pasta!!!

Well, actually we climbed up a mountain and not a hill, specifically Mount Vesuvius, the one famous for burying Pompeii.

We had extended our Rome trip by one more day as I had spent one day being sick, so on our second last day of Rome, we decided to do a day trip to Pompeii. While driving there, we decided to visit Mount Vesuvius since it was along the way. It proved to be the right decision cos Pompeii was quite the disappointment, but more on that later.

Some facts about Mount Vesuvius first

- Vesuvius is the only active volcano in mainland Europe

- It last erupted in 1944 but still poses a threat to the cities around it

- It is still considered an active volcano

- Mount Vesuvius is 4300 feet or 1310m above sea level.

- To give you an idea of how explosive it was; when Mount Vesuvius blew its top in 79AD the height of the mountain was halved and the nearby coastline extended about four hundred metres further out!

We drove almost to the top and climbing up the last bit of Mount Vesuvius was very very tiring to say the least. Though it was still winter, there were quite a few people climbing up the mountain. We met a French father with his 2 boys, one of them looked like he was only 3 or 4!!! And of course, there were the Italians with their dogs right up in the mountains, lol...

The barren treacherous moon-like terrain we had to climb up

Actually there was a path and the view was not so barren

It's free to climb up the mountain, you only have to pay if you climbed right to the summit. The view up there was pretty amazing. The mountain had quite a few souvenir shops and there was one right at the summit! Imagine making their way up 1310m up to work everyday, faints...

We decided to take a break at the summit to eat our lunch of spaghetti bolognese which CS had cooked. Our thermal pot has proven to be quite the good investment, hehe... And yes, that's how CS and W ended up at the mountain, eating a pot of pasta.

Trusty thermal pot looking over the edge of the volcanic crater

After the fortifying lunch, we headed to Pompeii. Maybe it was because we had lovely Brian as our guide for 2 days or maybe Pompeii was just really quite poorly maintained but we totally didn't enjoy Pompeii at all. The site was not well organized for tourists to visit. Visiting with a tour guide would be recommended. The audio guide not arranged properly according to the map given and it was old and falling apart. There were 2 separate numbers on many of the sites so it wasn't clear which one we had to enter into the audio guide and there was a severe shortage of signage. Sad to say, it just felt like a big mess. I'm sure the site itself is probably quite impressive but as we and the other tourists there spent half the time figuring out where to go, it kind of just killed any interest. I think the exhibition we attended in the National Musesum in Singapore was way better and gave me a better idea of what life was like. All in all, quite disappointing.

Pompeii

The next day was slightly better, we headed to the catacombs just outside of Rome city before taking a ferry to Barcelona. There were guided tours and we had a funny Filipino man as our guide. I must say it was quite well organized, there were tours in English, Korean, Italian and some other languages. It was a shame that they removed all the bones as tourists kept taking them as souvenirs, no photographs were allowed too, so no bones and no photos. It was seriously quite interesting though and the guide really made our tour quite interesting. He had pop quizzes for us and if you failed you get a lifetime stay in the catacombs.....

We then drove off to Livorno to catch a ferry to Barcelona. The ferry terminal was seriously ulu (in the middle of nowhere) and we ended up eating instant pasta at a little bar for dinner. As we had a lot of time before the ferry set sailed, we ended up watching "The men who stare at goats" in the car, our own version of a drive in movie, lol... Movie was damn funny, go watch it.

The ferry itself was quite nice, we booked a cabin to ourselves and the beds were rather comfortable. Having said that though, we are definitely not cruise people, one night is fine, but anything longer than that will drive me mad.

And now, Spain!! Actually we are now in Germany, heading to Switzerland, we just have a huge backlog of entries to do, whoops...