Home From Europe

An explanation is in order for sure. My last posted blog was on July 3rd was without any pictures and was a hastily posted, half written effort (sorry. There were 2 reasons for the big stall in what was otherwise a pretty good (IMO) consistently written travel blog. I had been plagued with intermittent wifi access and had been having challenges with that, but the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak, was my troubles with the Google storage space needed to upload more pictures. Add to that a very limited time to work on a resolution and offline blogs due to a packed travel schedule, and well, here I am home on Mon the 16th, without having updated since that hastily written start of a blog covering Pompei.

 

I am still experiencing storage problems and unable to upload any more pictures. The blogger site uses Picasa to store pictures on Google storage and you are given 1 Gig for photos free to start with. I had used that up by the beginning of June and upgraded to 25 Gig at 2.49 a month at that time. The trouble started when my purchase was charged to my BOM MasterCard, which was blocked due to "suspicious activity" (they have since given me a new number). I was able to fix that and update my wallet with my RBC Visa and I received the upgraded storage for June and resumed blogging. When the July payment was processed for the subscription they used the old credit card rather than the new one in my wallet and I had to go in and manually update the order again to use my other credit card. That is when the whole order got "stuck".

 

The Google wallet site has the order as "received on Jul 4th", but they have neither billed the Visa, nor given me my storage. My enquiries have only generated a "we are looking into it" reply. So I am stuck, unable to upload any more trip photos, which really is the essence of my travel blog.

 

I could go into a lot of detail in a written blog about that last week and a half of my trip, but you really need to see the pictures to appreciate the sights, which is why I gave up on the Pompei post of Jul 3rd, (accidently posted rather than left as draft) and why I will leave until I can upload pictures for the following planned blogs:

. Rome - Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel

. Rome - Colosseum and Palestine Hill and Wandering Rome

. Naples and Pompei Ruins

. Climbing Mount Vesuvius

. Sorrento and a Capris Day trip by boat

. Amalfi and Positano

. Rome and Homeward Bound

 

The last bit of my trip was spectacular, for many reasons. I made great new friends, saw some pretty excellent historic sites, feasted on great food and wine and enjoyed some very beautiful scenery. Stay tuned, hopefully the storage problem will get sorted out soon and I can tell you all about it.

 

In the meantime, I am going to try to delete a few unneeded Picasa pictures and hope to free up enough space to resume posts on my "Toronto Is My Town" blog, which isn't so picture intensive. I will finish my Europe travel blog once I can upload pictures.

 

Watch for my next post by end of day at http://torontoismytown.blogspot.ca/.

 

Adios, Au revoir and Arrivederci my Friends!

 

The Ruins of Ancient Pompei

Tue July 3rd was to be a busy day. We had a guided tour of Pompei lined up for the morning and a "special" guided climb around the rim of Vesuvius, Italy's most famous active volcano on tap for the afternoon.

The ruins of Pompei were a 30 minute walk from the hotel and we arrived to meet our guide in time for the 8:30 opening of the site. Our Guide, Michaele, a professor according to his name tag, grew up in Pompei and had been guiding ruins tours for 35 years. He really knew his stuff. I was in awe of the ancient Romans and how they lived with much of what we would consider modern day comforts, running water, central heating and fabulous leisure time activities, such as theatre, sports and of course Roman Baths.

They have excavated 2/3rds of the City of Pompei, so the place is huge. It would take several days to see the entire site. We hit the high points in our 2 1/2 hour tour.

I have many pictures of Ancient Pompei which will go here.

At the end of the tour we had some free time to wander the site before our excursion to Mount Vesuvio. Given 35 degree temperatures and no shade, I opted to wander my way out to the gelato stand. My favourite, limone, is an Italian standard, given the abundant lemons, and is an extremely refreshing treat.