Our next stop around the northern Mediterranean coast was Salerno. This is a gateway port for us to make a trip north to Sorrento and Pompei. Sorrento sits on cliffs overlooking the Bay of Naples, away in the distance Mt Vesuvius lurks on the horizon. Some great views of the coastline from the bus.

We have a couple of hours looking around a small touristy area of central Sorrento. Very busy being well into the summer season.

After trawling through a narrow street packed with everything a tourist would want, including postcards, we retired to a cafe for a Margarita pizza and a glass of rose.

Naples and the surrounding towns are famous for their Margarita pizzas. We were not disappointed. Slobro was very keen to put his feet up and enjoy people watching in the piazza.

It was soon time to move on to Pompei. Part of the deal it seems on these excursions is the need to drop into some ‘factories’ to check out local time honoured customs and production techniques. So we spent some time in shop that was full of wooden pieces, small tables, platters, music boxes, jewel cases and chess sets. These were made with ‘inlaid’ pieces of wood, quite intricate designs. Allthego was tempted by a very nice chess board. Thought twice about it and realised that at 400 Euros he would need to play an awful lot of chess to amortise the outlay! It would also probably end up in a garage sale down the track so it was passed up.

Slobro said that all the blog readers would know about Pompei and there was no need to go on and on about it in any detail. So my only observation is that Mt Vesuvius would have towered over old Pompei and the surrounding countryside.

Today the mountain has two peaks, but it is thought that when it exploded in 79AD it was one much higher conical type peak. The top was just blown off leaving it as it is today. The people must have got one hell of a fright before they suffocated and were swamped by the mud flows, ash and other debris . It last erupted in 1944. Today, the mountain is considered active and pressure is apparently very slowly building up. Maybe it will blow off again sometime in the near future. I wouldn’t want to be one of the 700,000 people who today live around it’s base!

We had an hour and a half with our guide looking at the excavations, quite amazing what has been uncovered here.

A bucket list experience ticked off our list! Back to the ship and the overnight sail north to Civitavecchia, Rome’s port.