Climbing Mt.Vesuvius
Climbing Mount Vesuvius in Italy is possibly worth it. It depends on how good of a driver you are,\, and how long you can hike. My mother is a fantastic driver, and I have attempted one of the 7 summits so the hiking was not going to be an issue. I still did not make it to the top! All due to a serious lack of information on the most widely used library: The Internet! This is why people say don’t trust the internet! Here is my recommendations:
- Go early in the morning! There are so many benifits of this! You dotn have to hike in the heat, there are less crowds, and probably more parking!
- The parking is FREE but it’s not actually free because the park service gave some guys a permit to charge people for parking. You also have to pay for a parking spot ahead of time Dont park at the very top of the road right before the entrance because it is for busses only.
- Try to drive a small car because Italians like to pretend that one lane roads are two lane roads and they use them like two lane roads. Your car might get scratched FYI
- You have to have pre-purchased a ticket online to get onto the trail. To get a ticket you have to go to this website:https: //www.parconazionaledelvesuvio.it/en/visit-the-park/the-paths/the-great-cono-2/ and buy a ticket for a times slot the day before. Each time slot only has 10 tickets available.
- If you are not a bus and you park where everyone else parks, it is a very long walk up to the start of the trail. I would suggest having someone drive everyone in your party up to the entrance, drop everyone off and go back down and park. The person who drives everyone probably wont get to climb the mountain but if they do, they will have to climb almost double of what the other people climb.
- The bus ride that is offered by the parking guys in vests is $15 per person and you have to already have a ticket for getting into the park. The bus ride may be worth the money for some people but I would recommend just walking or being dropped off.
- The roads up are very windy and small and alot of busses go up them. Have the best driver of the group behind the wheel to avoid collisions.
Pompeii
Pompeii is mind blowing! Walking on a road that looks perfectly intact while knowing that it is 2000 years old is crazy! The intricacy of life in Pompeii and the Roman empire is very fascinating because we often think that everyone was not as smart back then but they were super smart! There was plumbing in pompeii! Not plumbing like ours today but they had lead pipes and running water in houses. I would 100% recommend having a guided tour, you learn so much more! The tour company we used was Askos, our guide was great and we learned so much! Some fun facts were that romans used urine to clean their clothes. They also had the coolest fountains. The fountains around the city were landmarks used as meeting places.
Herculaneum
Herculaneum is not well known, probably due to its size. Herculaneum was a port city resting closer to vesuvius than pompeii. Because it was closer to vesuvius it is much more preserved. There is wood from it’s time as well as many other artifacts. The sad part is that since it was buried under 50+ feet of ash for thousands of years people forgot about it and built towns on top of it. The small section that is visible today is really cool but it is a shame that a large portion of it remains buried under homes and roads. For pompeii you need a whole day and a tour guide. I would recommend going to pompeii first so you learn all about the life style and then go to herculaneum without a guide. It is small enough that it’s just better to wander around the city. It was rather quiet when we went so we usually were able to go into each building with just our group. There is a garden for reading and relaxing as well as caves demonstrating how they excavate buildings. I found Herculaneum more enjoyable because we got to run around the city “discovering” everything and use the information we learned in pompeii to deduce what the buildings were for.
