It started much the same as all the previous days, the alarm on my phone waking us up much earlier than I would've liked to the sounds of Taylor Swift. The breakfast in that hotel really wasn't very good, but it wasn't awful either so you can't really complain. We got dressed and got ready to take a trip up Mount Vesuvius.
One thing I do remember about that morning in particular is that it was still warm, but it was quite cloudy. It was so nice just to take a break out of the sun and the heat for a little while, as we had been continuously exposed to it all the time.
The coach drove us up about 2/3 of the way up Vesuvius, where there was a dropping point and a car park and where people would then walk to the crater from. The walk wasn't actually too bad, it was zig-zagging so it wasn't too steep and was covered in gravel. The gravel did make it slightly more difficult on the way down, but it was helpful on the way up.
When we got to the top of the volcano (which may I add is still an active volcano which could have erupted at any moment) we were literally standing on the edge of the crater. At first I was really surprised at how large it was. I don't know why, but I had the idea in my head that it was a tiny little thing, with a 2m diameter or something like that. But this was absolutely ginormous. The public foot path only stretched around half of it and it took us about 20 minutes to get the whole way round the foot path.
Within the crater, there are lines on the rock and our tour guide told us that these lines are where the magma (lava) has previously risen before the volcano erupted. It was so weird to think that just below our feet there was huge amount of lava just waiting for the trigger of an earthquake to erupt and go everywhere. Our tour guide also said that when Vesuvius does erupt, which it will one day, the lava that has been building for thousands of years has a pressure that is too strong, and so it won't erupt by blowing its top off like a normal volcano, but by completely exploding.
One of the best things about the volcano however was how windy it was up there. It was just so nice to take a break from the sun. And, as it turns out, the signal at the top of the mountain was really great. Actually, my friend Leah rang her grandparents so that she could tell them that she was ringing them from the top of Vesuvius! I also picked up a few loose rocks from the ground, so that I could take a little piece of history home with me.
Like I already mentioned, the walk back down the gravel path was a lot more difficult, and several of us (myself included) slipped over more times than I care to admit. However, before we knew it, we were back on the coach and heading to Pompeii. By this point the sun and the heat had come out again and was making the coach feel more like than oven than a transportation device.
When we got to just outside the entrance to Pompeii, we all got off the coach to get lunch, leaving our bags on the coach. We didn't realise that we wouldn't be able to retrieve them again before going into Pompeii and consequently many of us hadn't sun creamed up the way we should've done, causing a very big problem for us pasty skinned Brits.
However, we sat and had the packed lunches the hotel had made for us (which were disgusting) and then I bought a magnum from a kiosk. We then met up with our tour guide again and entered Pompeii. I don't know whether it was because I had already seen Herculaneum and it was quite similar, or whether it was because I was very concise of the sun burning my shoulders, but I was actually really quite underwhelmed by Pompeii. Looking back now at all of the photos that I took, I know that this was wrong and I wish that I had paid a little more attention so that I could give you some interesting facts about the various part of it.
Pompeii was covered in ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted, which then hardened to become a large solid, perfectly preserving everything underneath.
There were plaster casts made of people using the ash rock as a mould. I decided not to take any pictures of these, but they were all people who were lying down, gasping for breath as the ash turned solid in their lungs. It looked excruciating.
One of my favourite parts of it was the zebra crossing. The Romans had designed it so that people could hop from one piece of stone to the other, keeping their feet out of all of the sewage in the streets, while still keeping the roads accessible for chariots to go down. I think that although we don't have this problem anymore, all zebra crossings should be made like this - much more fun!
Another of my favourite parts (although I probably shouldn't call it that... let's say most interesting) was the ancient Roman brothel, where there were 5 or 6 rooms with stone beds and nothing else apart from very errr.... graphic freizes. There were even stone models of certain parts of the male anatomy stuck above the doors as a symbol of what the place was.
The main square was absolutely huge and is currently being used as a kind of exhibition for some artwork and statues by a more modern artist, and so aren't originals.
After we looked around the square and the pottery workshop we headed for the coach and for home. We were all quite excited because that evening was the first one where we didn't have anything booked or planned and so had free time. As our hotel sat right on the coast, there was a private beach attached and we had all been clamouring the whole trip to go on it and that evening we were finally allowed to.
First however, Alice, Leah and myself went back to the room where I discovered the full extent of my burns, and spent a little while just cooling down before we went down to the beach to have some fun. We weren't actually allowed to swim, because there was no lifeguard, but we were allowed to paddle and sit down in the water as long as it wasn't too deep. It ended up being great fun as there were several balls that we threw around and we played many races and games. I even learnt how to skim stones! There's something about being in water, but especially the sea, it makes me never want to get out, I just love it so much. And plus, just look at the view. How could you not want to just sit and stare at that???
So after all of our fun frolicking in the sea, we returned to our room where we showered and got ready for dinner and our last night. That dinner was, however, disgusting. There was this cake thing that we had... it was completely inedible bleughhhhh!
So then our teachers took us out to get ice cream for a nearby shop as a last night treat and we had an 'awards ceremony'. It's basically this thing that the school does where they award everybody an award for something they have done during the trip. I got the water baby award along with a couple of other people for being the last ones out of the sea!
After that we were all pretty tired so we collapsed into bed. Something happened to me however, and those three sips of red bull I had hit me 24 hours late and resulted in me jumping up and down on my bed dancing to Taylor Swift! Is that scary or what???
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