Civitavecchia - Salerno

The cruise started in Civitavecchia where we met up with Alex and Karen. This cruise was, in part, to celebrate Alex’s 80th birthday. At our first stop in Amalfi we witnessed water bombers trying to contain the fires which were set by arsonists! From Salerno we made our way back to Herculaneum which was devastated by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79AD. Herculaneum's fate was very different from the ash which engulfed Pompeii. A 500C, 20m high lava flow travelling at over 100 km/hr overwhelmed those residents who hadn't evacuated. Many of them were found sheltering in storage lockers on the docks waiting for rescue boats that never came. Those same docks are now 400m inland as the flow continued into the sea.