Mt Vesuvius

“How am I gonna be an optimist about this?” – Lars Ulrich

Needless to say the whole weekend we sang the Pompeii song because the Benincosa famiglia is all about theme music for each adventure.

Getting to Mount Vesuvius

Mt Vesuvius makes you think you are in a third world country the way they run the show there. In other words it’s a total scam. But you pay for it because you went to all the effort to get there.

Here’s how it worked for us. First you drive up a windy mountain (very close to our place in Torre Del Greco) and don’t pay any tolls! Hurray!

Then you get to the official parking spot.

There are some pretty views on the way up and fun statues too.

This “official parking spot” is really just on the side of the road about 1.5 km from the actual path up the mountain. You pay 5€ 🙁 for this parking. The parking is just on a long part of the road.

Then you can either walk the 1.5 km to the official entrance or pay 2€ for every person over 1 meter to take a shared van up. We did cause Maddie. So that costs 10€ for the six of us.

That was nice and the van ride was ok

Then they drop you off at the “ticket office”. And at this point I can’t tell if this is the official one or someone is trying to rip me off.

So we buy our tickets. Guess what? 10€ a person for each person taller than a meter. What? 50€? Shoot. Ok. I pay. But now you have to walk another 200 meters up to the official entrance. Why didn’t the bus I just paid for take me there?

And then you finally show your ticket to the guide. I had read there were free walking sticks you could borrow. So I went to get one. Then they explained to me that after I return it I was supposed to tip the guy there? What? So up we went without walking sticks.

At the top I also read you get a free guided tour that comes with the price of admission. I asked the guy and he explained that you take the tour and if you like it you tip the guide. Guess what? We became our own tour guide. And by now to be honest we are pretty tired of tour guides.

Finally free and up to the top it was marvelous.

We could see the island of Capri, Sorrento, Naples, and pretty much all over. It was such a perfect day. The weather was a perfect 68° (we aren’t adjusted to Celsius yet) and no wind.

We liked seeing the steam coming off the inside of the volcano. 🌋. It was funny to see how the kids were a little frightened of the idea of climbing a volcano. Maybe we should have been more so.