If you have never been to Mt. Vesuvius or Pompeii, I highly suggest you go!  These 2 places are AMAZING!  Mt. Vesuvius is about 5 1/2 miles east of Naples, Italy.  My brother and I decided to take a hiking tour up Mount Vesuvius.  That sucker is brutal!  It’s a steep incline but the views are absolutely amazing.

It was surreal hiking to the top of a live volcano and seeing something up close that caused such mass destruction thousands of years ago.  As a refresher, Mt. Vesuvius is the volcano that destroyed the ancient city of Pompeii in 79AD.  According to the tour guide, the volcano (which has been dormant since 1944) is due to erupt again soon and will probably be as devastating as it was in 79AD.  They have tons of monitoring devices which they say can alert them 3-4 days before an eruption and they can enact the evacuation plan.  CNN was there filming a documentary about the volcano.  The further up the volcano we hiked, the darker it got as we were well into the clouds.

You can see smoke rising up from inside the crater in this picture.

Overall, it was a great experience and really helped to put some context around our subsequent visit to Pompeii.