Adventures in Pompei and to Mt Vesuvius

Our day started with an insane bus ride to Pompei. That was just the beggining. We got to the bus station just fine, but the bus ride was something else. The bus driver passed EVERY car on the road! There are posted speed limits but he had to be going at least twice as fast. It was a little scary! Pompei was excellent, we were there from 9:30 am to 2 pm. We took around 150 picturers so I'll let them explani everything later. We thought it was going to be small but it's huge! Pretty much the entire city was excavated. We didn't even see all of it!

Ok, the adventure to Mt Vesuvius; We went to the "point of sale" booth as indicated in the ticket office. Our guide book says to buy tickets on the bus so we waited at a sign that had bus routes. Well the time the bus was supposed to come came and went to we walked down the hill to the tourist office. He didn't nhave tickets and told us to try the tourist shop across the street. They didn't have tickets and told us to go back up to the train station on the hill. We went back and were told to go back to the tourist office. The guy at the tourist office just said to get on the bus and pay later. Other people had tickets and said they got them at the train station. I think they bought them at the train ticket window even though the sign in the window said to buy tickets at the point of sale booth. I don't know... the other places we had tried usually have tickets but they had run out. So anyway, the bus driver told us to pay at the top. 10 minutes into the bus ride he pulls over and starts yelling at someone on his cell phone for almost 5 minuts. The one person on the bus who spoke Italian asked if there was a problem so he made her translate to us and some otheer people who also couldn't get tickets: we were to just pay him 5 euros for the trip and that would be fine. That was cool with us because a round trip ticket is usually €8.60. That was taken care of but the bus ride up up the mountain was something else. It's switched back pretty much the whole way nd he would just lay on the horn to warn people we were coming and then he would yell "It's okay, it's okay" you could see people white knucking the seat, wide eyed with great looks on their faces. We hiked to the crates wich was letting out a little steam here and there. The way back down the mountain was a little better, we came with in inches of colliding with a little car, the bus driver just laid on the horn until the guy backed up. The driver had honked before we turned the corner. You really had to be there to get the full experience but let's just say it was scariest bus trip we've ever experienced.

we had really good pizza again tonight, it's so fresh tasting!

We leave for Cinque Terre very early tomorrow, we're looking forward to laying on the beach and eating fresh pesto!

I have to go shower, we're absolutely filthy! The dirt on Vesuvius is black and as a reult my feet are black as well. Oh, I'm now carrying rocks in my backpack, I couldn't resist! But volcanic rocks are lighter than regular rocks right?