Favourite Photos of Ercolano, and Solfratara

Naples was a very sketchy city -- like Toronto on a garbage struck + a lot of immigrants and unemployed people. Anyhoo, the area was quite awesome in that we could easily travel to sights like Ercolano (very similar to Pompeii), and Solfratara (an old sulfur mine). Here are some of my favourites from our time spent in those areas (click a photo to enlarge it).

This is overlooking Ercolano. Like Pompeii, it was buried with the eruption of Vesuvius many years ago and is an amazing example of life in the Roman times.

This is Lenny at the current day ground level; shows you how much that the archaeologists had to dig to find everything.

These pots would've been part of a restaurant where Romans could stop for lunch.

Here's Mount Vesuvius in case you've never seen it before. It could erupt any time now and there's only 3 million people living in the direct area that would have to be evacuated... 

This is Solfratara - an old sulphur mine that is now a gigantic heat-filled field that smells like toots. Nasty nasty toots. The triangle things are satellite reflectors to monitor shifts in the ground.

This is a view of the side of the field to give you an idea how much of a crater it is.

This is how stinky it was. Even though it was 40 degrees celcius, I still preferred wrapping myself to keep out some of the stink. You can see one of the sulphur geysers in the background.

A close-up of the stink hole, ahem, geyser.

There were a lot of unique interesting plants near Solfratara. This is a strawberry tree. Anybody ever heard of that before?

This last picture is at the base of the drive to the Solfratara mines. It was SO hot, but we were still able to enjoy the beautiful sights.

2 more favourites posts left! Naples tonight and the Rome/Vatican tour tomorrow!