Keeping up with the "K"lubines: Pompeii and Rome

We had a tour of Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius planned for the next day. I got an email the night before saying the Mount Vesuvius tour was cancelled due to mudslides at the national park and that it was going to be closed for 3-5 days. That was a bummer, because this tour was something we were all looking forward to....except for Hannah who was not completely sold on hiking up an active volcano :). The next morning we decided to still take the train to Pompeii to visit the ruins despite the rain. This turned out to be a complete wash out. We got to Pompeii to find out that the ruins were closed that day as well due to all the rain, It was good thing, because it was raining heavily and we would have probably not enjoyed our visit.

So, we never got out of the train station and took the next train back to Sorrento.

The jet lag was still real at this point :)

So, our morning was a little bit of a bust. By the time we got back to Sorrento the rain had stopped there. We decided to walk around town some more.....some family members were more willing than others :)

We found a nice pizzeria for a late lunch and then headed back to the hotel to relax for while before watching more World Cup soccer at our favorite Pub :) and then dinner!

The weather really turned around the next day and was back to nothing but blue skies.

Breakfast views

This was supposed to be a "free" day before heading back to Rome late in the afternoon. We tried to balance our trip with tours/sightseeing and free time.

Since the ruins of Pompeii was something we were all interested in, we decided to take the train back out there.

We are all glad that we went back. It was a great morning and so fascinating.

We opted for the self guided audio tour, which was a great choice for our family.

We got there early enough and it was not crowded yet. I know we were there during off season and the crowds were nothing compared to high season, but I was still surprised to see how busy it got.

The archaeological site is 2 miles in circumference and about 163 acres. It would take days to explore it all. It is an entire city with squares, temples, bath, public buildings, villas and shops. Learning about how advanced the Romans were thousands of years ago was definitely fascinating. Evan was very interested since he had recently learned more about Romans.

We had a nice lunch outside before catching the train back to Sorrento. Then we made our way back to Rome for the remainder of our trip.

We met up with Ashley and Derek in Rome for dinner.

Nora challenged Derek with something (I don't remember what it was) and he lost, so he had to eat a lemon! We think Nora was smitten with Derek right away.

The next morning we had a "Skip the Line" St Peter's Basilica tour with Dome climb booked. The description said that we would climb up the Dome first and then tour the basilica. So, we thought we could skip the line, go up the Dome and then casually distance ourselves from the tour. Well, we had to do the tour first and then go up the Dome. It was very interesting for a while, but two hours in we all lost a little interest. The kids were troopers though and did not complain.

We walked up the Dome to enjoy these views

The Vatican has its own post office and stamp. So, we bought a Vatican stamp and postcard and mailed it to Grandma from the top of St Peters basilica.

After the tour we were all hungry and a little "toured" out, but we had tickets to the Vatican museum and Sistine chapel. We decided to make a quick walk through before meeting Ashley and Derek for lunch. The quick walk through took quite some time.....it is a maze to get through all of the museums to the Sistine chapel and then it is a long way out through more museums to get to the exit. We started to laugh at how many times we saw a sign saying "Uscita".....