Category: volcanoes

Categories

Pompeii & Herculaneum

As promised in the previous Blog post, with its overview of my recent trip to Naples, I now bring you a post that concentrates entirely on Pompeii and Herculaneum, both of which I visited from Naples as day excursions during that recent trip.

Both places were wealthy ancient Roman cities that were destroyed in a catastrophic two-day eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in (probably) October 79 CE. The first phase of the eruption produced a gigantic column of pumice and volcanic ash, which, when it collapsed, began to rain down volcanic material mainly over Pompeii, whereas

Inside a Volcano!

As the title says, it is indeed about going inside a volcano. Obviously that won’t be an active volcano (any such volcano you could enter only once, and get instantly vaporized). Instead it’s a very special, probably even unique commodification of a dormant volcano, more precisely a drained magma chamber, going down over 120m below the crater top. It is located on the Reykjanes Peninsula a ca. 20-30 minute drive south of Reykjavik.

As you may recall from the general Iceland post, the Reykjanes Peninsula is also where

Iceland in 2023

Twelve days ago I came back from my return trip to Iceland. Like on my first trip there back in 2004, I totally fell in love with the Icelandic scenery, be it glaciers, volcanic wastelands or dramatic sea cliffs (full of puffins in various places). Unlike in 2004, though, I brought back plenty of much better photos too, compared to the ones I took with my very first digital camera in 2004 (see this previous Blog post). So I can give you another little overview photo essay now – up to date and obviously with a