Day 3
From the moment i woke up i was so excited to finally be going to Pompeii. For many years i knew about this place and always tried to imagine what it would be like to see it with my own eyes, now i was on the way there!.
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| Mount Vesuvius as background |
It took us 3 hours to get to Pompeii from Rome. We arrived at the hotel just before lunch time. Without us knowing the hotel was just only less than 10 minutes walking to the Pompeii ruins :D. We paid €11 each for the ticket and it was worth it. Prepare for a long walk so better use a good shoes and bring extra water :-). There is big a café inside the grounds.
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| Porta Marina and the city walls |
Pompeii is a city near Naples. according to Wikipedia, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 AD. The eruption buried Pompeii under ash and rock. It was rediscovered in the 16th century, but the exploration did not begin until 1748.
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| Road in Pompeii |
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| Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus |
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| One of the beds in the brothel |
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| Garden of the Fugitive |
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| Temple of Apollo |
Day 4
Today is Sunday. We hit the road as soon as we finished breakfast and were again lucky with the weather. From Pompeii to Pisa took around 6 hours driving and it was a nice drive through the country side with views of many vineyards along the way. We arrived at the hotel early evening. After freshening up we decided to have a look around. It took us 25 minutes walking to Pisa tower.
Day 5
Ready to climb the Pisa tower!. We bought the tickets online for €17 each from this website in advance. Actually it is cheaper to buy the ticket on site €15, but we prepaid to guarantee a time slot otherwise it could be a long wait. The visit lasts about 30 minutes.
The spiral staircase to the tower has about 300 steps and it includes narrow and exposes passageways. It was a very strange experience to climb. Even though you are physically climbing upwards it appears that your going downwards, whilst on the other side the steps are actually pointing downwards slightly and that makes it very heavy climbing (this is only adjacent to the lean). On the other two parts of the steps it appears normal except you are leaning to the right or left. Overall its a great experience and worth a visit.
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| Slippery Steps |
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| On the top of the Pisa Tower |
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| Narrow passageway |
We continued driving to Rome at lunch time. This time we took a route via Florence so we could visit and at least see Ponte Vecchico or the old bridge. Unlike all other bridges in Florence, Ponte Vecchico is the only bridge that survived World war II. It was hard to find parking there, so hubby had to park illegally so i could run and took a picture of the bridge from a distance.
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| Ponte Vecchico |
We arrived in Rome in the evening and back to Norway early in the morning.
