A glorious day today. We got the train to Pompeii to go to Mt Vesuvius. You get a bus up through the town to the outskirts of the National Park and transfer to a 4x4 truck
About 20 minutes up a steep track and you disembark to walk the last 200m to the crater
The famous eruption was in 79AD of course but they reckon Vesuvius is the most dangerous volcano in Europe mainly because there are around 3M people living in fairly close proximity.
The last time the volcano erupted was in 1944 ( there's some newsreel footage on YouTube ) but they reckon it has erupted over 100 times and they think the next one will be Pompeii like with super heated ash that will destroy the nearby towns. They have just updated their evacuation plan for the area.
The inside of the crater
You can just see water vapour leaking out
And this is the view from the craters edge - Naples is in the far distance
In1880 they built a cable car to take people up to the top - someone wrote the song Funiculi Funicula to celebrate th event. It was destroyed in the 1944 eruption.
Quite an experience - visiting a volcano is not to be missed.
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