Day 4 - Mount Vesuvius and Capri

This Blog entry is all over the place, but since I have been working on it and not managing to get it up for quite some time, I have decided to just post it anyway. Apologies if it is hard to follow. On Day 4 we arrived at Naples and there were quite a few choices of things to do. The tours done through the ship were quite expensive, and often involved lots of time on buses, so we kept them to a minimum, but Papa Bear and Zander were both intrigued by the idea of hiking Mount Vesuvius and being able to stand on the edge of a crater, so at Naples they did the Ship's tour of Mount Vesuvius. I decided to take the Rocket on a hydrofoil to the island of Capri.

The boat ride to Capri took about 40 mins arriving at Marina Grande, and then we started going for a walk. The poor little Rocket was hungry and thirsty, but I didn't have any Euros, and needed to find a bank. There was a sign for the town centre, so that is where we headed, but, Oh My Goodness!! It turned out to be a hike!! Hundreds of very steep steps that seemed to go on forever. There is a funicular to the top, but we didn't realise this at the time. We finally made it to the top, and were lucky enough to find someone who spoke enough english to point us in the direction of a bank. Then we treated ourselves to a drink and the Rocket to a chocolato Gelato in a sweet little Italian cafe.
Brock near Marina Grande at the end of our day on Capri before we caught the Hydrofoil back. He found some interesting Rocks, some of them made it back to England, then onto Adelaide and we still have them now in Melbourne.

The beautiful sunrise over Mt Vesuvius, with quite a large boat in front of it.
These are the box of official volcanic stones that we bought at the top of Mt Vesuvius. I am not sure how 'official' they are, but they are quite pretty.









The waffle cone had the name of the cafe stamped on it.


The Italian fascination for growing food in even the smallest of open spaces is commendable. Similar small vegetable gardens dot parts of the city which aren't high rise, and spread even half way up Mt Vesuvius



The sun rising over Mt Vesuvius, outlining what would have been the former glory of the mountain. The outer peak on the left used to be the outer edge of the mountain, which rose over twice as high as the current mountain. This shows just how big the mountain used to be, and how devastating the eruption was when it buried Pompeii
The boat bringing in the harbour pilots to take us to Naples look like they are driving a toy boat from the top of the ship.


Mt Vesuvius at dawn as the boat starts to enter into the port of Naples, Italy.




The Rocket and Mama at the cafe in Capri after a very long walk!!
The Rocket with his Tunisian camel on the Hydrofoil to Capri




The path up and down the side of Mt Vesuvius is a very busy place. The bottom 3/4 of the mountain can be driven up in a car or bus, (though some of the keen people on the boat rode up on bicycles). This part of the path is for walking only, especially as the loose gravel that makes up the sides of the mountains is crumblysteep, and somewhat trecherous.
A kind traveller took a photo of us walking back down the mountain. We are almost to the bottom, with a hill in the background. That hill is the former edge of the original mountain before the big eruption that destroyed Pompeii. During that eruption well over 3/4 of the former mountain was blown into the sky, devastating the area.
At the top of the crater is a rather rickety fence to prevent you from either falling into the crater, with a rope fence on the other side to stop you falling down the side of the mountain. Even so Alex really wanted to balance on the big rock to show off the castle shaped rock he found. Especially as I didn't want to cart down a whole bag of rocks to the boat and eventually through Aussie customs. I doubt customs would accept that it is ok to import because it is from an important volcano.
The view of the crater is spectacular, as is the amount of tiny little rock dust is surprising. It is also surpring that the rock fragments are also very sharp, so it is also wise to keep them out of your shoes.
The scale of the crater at the top of Mt Vesuvius is immense. It is also not actually very hot with rock plugging the crater bottom, which until 50 years ago had lava bubbling out of it. Unfortunately whilst the plug stops lava from flowing out, it also means the next eruption is likely to explode the mountain.
Photo of Alex after we had docked at Capri

On day four we arrived in Naples. The cruise into Naples was glorious as we began to see the first outlines of hills and mountains of the coast of Italy in the early dawn light.
There were lots of options from Naples, and our shortlist was Pompeii, Mount Vesuvius, and Capri. We deliberated lots before finally deciding that Alex and Papa would go on a bus tour so they could climb Mount Vesuvius and Brock and I would catch a ferry to the island of Capri.

A picture of Alex in front of our ship, the Ocean Village Two.


The view from Mount Vesuvius over Naples. The rocks show the clear path of the last lava flow around 50 years ago heading down the valley towards the city.
This is the view across Naples from the top of Mount Vesuvius. The rocky outcrops are the remnants of former lava flows, which have gradually grown over with some hardy plants.
Water melon carving at dinner
Ice sculpture outside one of the restaurants on the ship.

Day 3 - Tunisia

Day three when we awoke there were still miles of blue Mediterranean in one direction, but in the other direction we had arrived at a Port. It was so exciting! Our first port was Tunisia. I had been really looking forward to Tunisia. To be in Northern Africa with more than a hint of Arabia seemed so exotic. All the reviews I had found of Tunisia were written by English people and all of them were quite derogatory suggesting that Tunisia was tacky hole. I was certain that this couldn't be right and that they must just be being snobbish in favour of places like Italy. However, unfortunately after visiting Tunisia I felt that I had to side with them.

Tunisia played a very important role in ancient times, first with the famous Phoenician city of Carthage. Later, Tunisia was occupied by the Vandals during the 5th century AD, Byzantines in the 6th century, and Arabs in the 7th century. Under the Ottoman Empire, Tunisia was known as "Regency of Tunis". Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, is home to the ancient ruins of Carthage.
Despite being incredibly important historically, it was a bit of a dump. The ruins of Carthage were quite amazing, but are just slightly fenced off and have very little information about them except that they are a UNESCO World Heritage site. Compared with some of the Roman ruins in Rome such as the Colosseum which are so venerated it almost seemed as though no one really cares about Carthage.
We spent about half a day in Tunisia, so it is quite possible that we didn't get a totally accurate perception. It did seem to us though that Tunisia had gained the worst parts of western society and culture and had probably lost a lot of itself in the process.


We hired a taxi for the morning and first went driving around some of the ruins of Carthage. We then went to Sidi Bou Said which is a town that is built almost entirely of white and blue buildings. It was picturesque, but felt quite empty, so we didn't get out to wander but just had a look from the windowss of the taxi. Then we went into Tunis, the capital city, to the market. The market, or 'medina' is found at the centre of the city and is a tight maze of stone covered alleys full of intense scents and colours. It was difficult to feel that we could wander leisurely as we were obviously tourists and therefore harassed to buy things and come into stores. It would have been really nice to feel that we could take our time to look, but we really felt that we could not linger otherwise the shopkeepers would feel that we were interested and we may therefore be committed to purchasing. We did buy a few things, but apparently most of the 'local' art is actually imported from China and a lot of the things that were for sale did not look well made or handcrafted.
After a nervous half hour when we could not find our taxi driver and were concerned that we would be stranded in Tunisia while our boat left for Italy, we finally found him and were able to get back to the ship. When we got back to the port where the ship was docked, the gates into it were closed to the taxi, and he would not let us out (although he was quite polite about it) even though it would have been a short walk for us. Papa Bear said that he was pretty sure that the taxi driver may not be allowed back in at all without passengers, so he was trying to keep us in while he was convincing the guards to let the car through. It took about 15 mins, but they finally let us in. It was important for the taxi driver to get back in as the highest paying customers go for the taxis nearest the ship. In Tunisia it is part of the culture to bargain for everything. We had negotiated 50 euro for our taxi trip in the morning, which was half the price that the first taxi driver had suggested, so we were quite happy with this. We met an English family in Tunis who were very proud that they had managed to bargain their driver down to 50 euros, but their trip was just to the market and back where we had been to Carthage and Sidi Bou Said as well.
It was a relief when we were finally back on the ship and it was nice looking down from the ship to the port where there were some camels giving people from the ship some rides up and down the side of the ship.Also on Day three was a performance for children of Bagpuss (picture above) who apparently is a famous children's character in England, along the lines of Paddington Bear. We had never heard of him before. It seemed like a nostalgia trip for many of the older people on board the ship, but the boys still thought it was fun.