It turned out that the taxi could only go to the parking lot. Visitors must walk the remaining distance across four relatively short and one very, very long and steep switchbacks that rose 270 meters —about 800 feet-- from the parking lot pretty much straight up on steep switchback trails to the top of the crater. We managed to get up it – albeit slowly – and looked into the crater and down at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and all of Naples.(Picture 4 shows Vesuvius looming over the ruins of Pompeii.) Getting to the top was quite a climb. Even worse, the trek down the hill wasn’t too much better. The road was very steep and had a lot of rocks that you needed to avoid. But we got down in plenty of time to meet our taxi driver and go back to Ercolano. Then we found a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria with a big sign proclaiming "Wood Owen" (oven) and had great pizza for lunch. Afterwards it was time for the scavi.
The walk to the excavation site was quite long, and the walk from the ticket office to the actual site even longer. Then you went down a very long way through a covered passageway with extra wide metal mesh steps. That made the steep climb easier. Needless to say, we were already tired by the time we got into the actual ruins. This time we did take an audio set – and although it went on and on in an annoying fashion, we were able to hear what was known about the buildings. The town wasn’t discovered until much later than Pompeii, which was "found" in the 18th century. This town was never as big as Pompeii and only some of it has been excavated. Because it was buried under mud rather than hot ash, there are more houses that have more than one story and original roofs and the excavators found many more artifacts. Although we were very tired, we saw most of the buildings, and found it very affecting. You got a much more immediate connection to the people of this town than to the more anonymous ruins of Pompeii.