The next day we went out very early to fetch our rental car... it was a Smart for Four... it was the first time I saw this type car and before we got to pick it from the parking place I was wandering if with such a car we could make the tour of Italy... but thanks God it was a wonderful compact car which made our trip very comfortable...

after we fetch the car it took us ages to find our way out of Rome to the motorway that would lead us south to Naples...

before the Naples city we came across the lago d'Averno, a crater lake believed to be the mythical entrance to the underworld... after that there were the Solfatara plains... this is a park established on an old crater... in the park you may walk between the unlpleasant sulfurous fumes that find their way through cracks on the ground... you can feel the heat of the volcano below the ground you walk on... the ground feels as it may crack and find yourself inside the volcano :)...

The last last photo below is the port of Naples with mount Vesuvius at the far...

Naples was another difficult city to go thru... we didn't spend time in the city which we think it could be a very interesting thing, but we headed directly to Pompei ruins... so we rather drove thru the main streets of Naples port with our car... it was such a difficult thing to get out of this city again...

Following are photoes from Pompei... you need to spend at least 4-5 hours at Pompei to get into each and every house and street of this ancient city... we spend just 2.5 hours there... there are wonderful frescoes in many building to see... below in the fourth and fifth photos you can see mount Vesuvius again but this time a view from the south... it could be a nice thing to climb up the mountain to the crater, but that would take at least half a day so we didn't even consider it...

Although after we were out of Naples it proved to be a very easy thing to find our way to Pompei, it was so difficult to get out of it... we had plan to go and stay at Sorrento and it was getting late evening... below is a photo of Sorrento... when we entered the city there was a band, music, fireworks etc... we drove up to Piano di Sorento were we found a hotel with a wonderful view and decide to rest there... we were so tired but the fireworks was wonderful and we couldn't help drinking some grappa and watching Naples lights far at the other side of the dark Naples bay... our Hotel (Klein Wien) was just up a wonderful marina which you can see below in the last photo...