History lesson + mini-vac:

We decided to take a long weekend in Naples this weekend, doing all of the touristy stuff. We arranged to meet some friends (from Rome) down here, and hung out with them some yesterday.

A quick history lesson: for 2 days in 79 a.d., Mount Vesuvius erupted in a big way, causing a bit of consternation in the lower boot area. Clouds of ash spewed almost 100,000 feet into the air, delaying flights worldwide for quite a while.

We first visited Herculaneum, a city on the northern flank of Vesuvius. This city was spared by the majority of the ash, and is remarkably well preserved. We saw frescoes on the walls, mosaic tile floors; most of the walls of the buildings are intact.

We met our friends for lunch afterwards; the kids enjoyed playing together, and Cori kissed a langosteen shrimp crawfish baby lobster. Becca and I couldn't decide what we wanted to order, so we decided to each get something different, and split both entrees. The gnochi came out first, and happened to get placed closer to me. The second entree (fetuccini with scampi) came out a few minutes later, and was placed in front of Becca. It was a plate of noodles with two 8 inch (not including antenna) baby lobster looking bugs perched on top of it. I quickly decided that the gnochi was for my meal, and I graciously allowed my wife to take on the bugs. Everyone at the table (including, to a much lessser extent, Becca) got a big kick out of these things... the kids were daring each other to touch them. Cori ended up kissing one of them. I wasn't at the table at the time, so I don't know what her motivation was for that.

After lunch was Pompeii, but due to time constraints, we didn't get to spend very much time there, only about an hour and fifteen minutes. Pompeii is pretty well known, so I won't spend a lot of electrons telling you about it. We have pictures that will be posted within a few days, and you can see the differences between Herculaneum and Pompeii for yourself.

Last night, we went to Sorrento for dinner. Well actually, for a car accident, dinner, a concert attended by everyone in the southern half of Italy, and the resulting traffic jam afterwards.

We knew about the festival in Sorrento, and caravan'd out there with our friends. It's about 20 miles away, but the roads are twisty and hilly, and there was quite a bit of traffic out last night. While searching for a place to have dinner, we got into a bit of a scrape with a cement bridge piling, and *presto* our car's now "Romanized". Big scrape down the right side. At this point in the night, we'd been stuck in traffic for over an hour, and after all this, I'm sure I was an absolute delight to ride with. We finally found a place to park and walked through town to find a good place to eat, passing through a picturesque city square with an enormous stage set up on one side. Had decent pizza for dinner, started wandering back towards the cars. Four adults, four kids. That picturesque city square was now a thronging mass of people. It took almost an hour to shove our way across. Finally got through, got to the cars, then took almost 3 hours to drive 20 miles, due to the traffic jam of everyone leaving early to beat the rush. We left Sorrento at 10:00, and got back to the hotel at about 12:40. All told, should've gone to the Chinese place across the street for dinner instead, but that's just my opinion. I was not a happy camper last night. It's over now.

This morning, we decided to skip the Mount Vesuvius tour and trek back down toward Sorrento for more punishment - but on the other side of the peninsula, to the Amalfi Coast. Absolutely gorgeous drive, straight up and down mountains, 5 mile per hour hairpin curves, we'll post pics of this too. Had lunch in Amalfi, did the tourist thing. It's my favorite town now - too bad it's so far from Rome. Not a day trip, anyway. Fun drive, perfect little town on the coast.

The natives are restless, and are bugging me about going to dinner, so that's all for now; sorry for the abrupt conclusion. Keep an eye out for pics, either on FB or here - I'll try to make sure I update all of the places you folks could check.