The previous post in this series is here..
Original plan was to get the car in Naples and use it only to drive to and from airport. We looked at the maps, parking, traffic etc. and realized that in order to save time, it is best to drive to the buried city of Herculaneum first and enter the archeological site as soon as it opens. From there drive to Pompeii and finally drive back to Sorrento to the hotel, change and go to the Kayak starting point.
The morning traffic was surprisingly not bad to Ercolano where the Herculaneum buried village(or town) was. Once there, we missed a turn and ended up in a one way street that was as wide as the car. Pretty much had to fold the mirrors and drive through that lane and make it to a wider lane. Then folks directed us to the right parking spot. It was harrowing.
Nothing compared to what those poor folks felt in 47 AD when they were all buried in ash in a few moments.
Thanks to that event, we get to see what their life was like. The walls, the floors, the amphoras, statutes, frescos, graffiti, everything was just fascinating.
If you ever go to the Amalfi coast do not miss seeing Herculaneum. It may be smaller in size than Pompeii, but the houses and villas are grander. This was the rich peoples area of the time and you can clearly see the difference. By the time we got out of this place the temperatures were already climbing.
Here are some photos.. took me some time to process them in HDR. Knew when I shot them that it will need HDR processing, so did not worry about the light at that time.
some more images..
A long video of this site.. there was so many rooms and I tried capturing 10 second clips of every room or new thing and it all added up to almost 10 minutes!
We got some bottles of water outside the parking lot and made a dash to get to Pompeii after this. We were told to expect long lines everywhere, traffic and a parking nightmare in Pompeii.
So off we went..