It happened on the day you put your hand in mine you went up to my head just like a glass of wine girl you spark my attention like a firefly and make me happy to be alive

day two of pompeii i set my alarm for half six and then fell back asleep because i was still really tired, but i was still the first up and ready in my room and i was one of the only ones properly dressed in time for breakfast

breakfast was just as bad as dinner it was a buffet sort of thing but the choice was very limited, their tea was horrible it tasted like just water and sugar and i'm such a big tea drinker but i really struggled with it

the first place that we went was herculaneum, which is kind of like pompeii; basically it was destroyed in the same volcanic eruption that destroyed pompeii but if i'm remembering rightly it was for different things, pompeii was covered in ash and herculaneum was covered in lava

but herculaneum was fascinating, it was really well preserved and looked after..it was really odd walking through these houses and baths and knowing that thousands of years ago people walked in the same places you did, people lived in these houses and slept in the beds we were taking photographs of

and then thinking along the lines of so many people died here, that was kind of spooky and so weird..

herculaneum

then we drove to vesuvius.

right, climbing vesuvius was easily one of the hardest things that i've done in my entire life i am really not fit in the slightest, my idea of exercise is getting a packet of crisps out of the kitchen, and vesuvius (being a volcano and everything) is really steep and the surface is difficult, it's lots of little pebbles and you take one step and it slides backwards again

so i really, really, really struggled climbing vesuvius. i didn't even want to do it because i wasn't a geography student and the fact i was on the side of an active volcano really freaked me out, plus everyone else apart from me and H went storming off like super athletes and i felt a bit down about it tbh but that's life i suppose

we reached the top and had this talk with this man and he walked us around the top of the crater telling us about how the volcano works and the echo and how we can see pompeii from the top and so on, then we had to walk down and it was better than walking up but it was more dangerous because we kept on slipping

plus vesuvius was the part where it really hit us how careful you have to be there when it comes to souvenirs and stuff every single souvenir stall on vesuvius promises that its products are handmade by the owner, genuine lava etc etc and then you realise that each stall sells the exact same thing and so does a shop on the other side of naples

the view from somewhere up vesuvius

once we got back down, we went straight back to the hotel..we had like a half hour break and then V was sick and then the teachers announced we could go to the beach if we wanted but because V was sick and me and M didn't feel like it some of us stayed back at the hotel and sat in our room listening to music and chatting

then they all came back and we started playing card games and stuff but then we had dinner which was vile and then the teachers said that we could go out to the bars in town if we wanted and have something to drink

i chose not to go and stay with my friends T H and S and that was pretty nice, we sat in their room and read this book on naples and the mafia and listened to music and ate junk food..

when they all came back i went to my room again thinking i could go to sleep but that wasn't to be, instead W and C came in again to speak to M and some other lads came in too, we didn't play card games though..when they were sent to their own rooms W and C sneaked back in because their room was next to ours and we had joining balconies. so then we carried on talking for a bit longer and we had a laugh

when they had to go back the other lad in their room had locked them out so they had to go and get the room key of the other boy they were staying with who was getting more and more drunk in one of the other rooms, so that's how we left them

V went straight to sleep after that but M and I stayed up a bit longer talking about other people on the trip, but then we realised that V was asleep so we gave in and went to sleep too

Lyrics: firefly / jimmy needham