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Wednesday 9th August 2006 - Pompeii

We woke this morning to a fairly major thunder storm. Happily the tents were dry, unlike after our night in Chamonix. The main event of this day was a trip to the ruins at Pompeii.

The ruins are of a whole town.... a city back then.... with hundreds of residential properties and numerous other civic buildings, shops and so on. All of this was preserved under volcanic ash when Vesuvius erupted with devestating effect on 24th August AD79. And we also saw the famous preserved outlines of the poor people who were buried alive under volcanic debris.

The weather was bad, raining almost incessantly and not all of us had anything resembling a waterproof (it's not meant to rain in Italy in August and Martin already had enough to carry!). Martin was feeling ill that day, having succumbed to a chest infection or something. The kids were bored with ruined house after ruined house. Marina liked it! Martin was interested too until overcome with cold, wet and feeling sorry for himself!.

Back at the campsite, Martin and Marina used the internet point there to research the remainder of the trip as at that point we were still considering a trip to a Greek island or opssibly Slovenia. Eventually we decided on Venice followed by south of France, Greece being discounted because the ferries were infrequent, took 11 hours overnight and were quite expensive too.

We finished the day by swimming and playing in the pool and then by drinking the very nice local white wine. Oh, and we played cards too!

In the streets of Pompeii

By the big stadium

Back at the campsite, the view of Sorrento again