Pompeii and Paestum and Pistaccio ice cream.....

Here, as promised, are some of the pics I took while I was away with Form 2 on the first part of the Classics trip to Italy.

We stayed in a hotel which was right beside the excavations at Pompeii. Here is the view which greeted us when we woke up on our first morning in Italy. Room with a view or what?! Pompeii is approximately 12km from Vesuvius , which at 1281m (nearly as high as Ben Nevis) dominates the surrounding area. Its most famous eruption occurred in AD79 but it has erupted many times in history, the most recent eruption being in 1944.

We spent most of the first day exploring the excavations at Pompeii. It is an amazing place where you are constantly reminded of the links between geography and Classical history.

And here's a nice 'team' photo taken in the amphitheatre..

As explained in the last posting, Herculaneum was another Roman settlement destroyed by the AD79 eruption of Vesuvius. Today it is slowly being uncovered from the 10metre deep lahar which engulfed it...

Having visited Herculaneum on our second morning , we finally got to see Vesuvius at close quarters. A bus drive and then a fairly stiff climb on foot got us to the top where it was surprisingly cool and, sadly, very cloudy. However, although we didn't get to see the view over the Bay of Naples, it was pretty impressive to be standing on the edge of the crater and watching the fumaroles rising, a reminder that this volcano is a slumbering giant who is just having a long lie!

If you'd like to read some more about Vesuvius, you can have a look here and also at this website which I mentioned on a previous posting.

On our last full day before driving north to Rome, we had a spectacular drive along the Amalfi coast. It was a beautiful day and it was easy to see why this stretch of coastline is considered to have some of the most beauitiful scenery in Europe....

But this was a Classics trip and so you couldn't hang around admiring the scenery all day.......

The Amalfi coast was just an 'extra' en route to the Greek temples at Paestum. Now, I have seen Greek temples in Greece but I have to say these ones in Italy were every bit as impressive!

Perhaps it's just because it was a sort of 'home from home' ?!!

And then you all went off to Rome and I headed for the Alps (see the Highergeogblog for pics of that) but not before I'd had some amazing Italian ice cream.....