Where did we leave off? We mentioned Vietri, yes? Let’s back up a minute.

We left Sicily two days ahead of schedule. Mostly because we were running out of interesting things to do within a reasonable drive … and because our hotel — Feudogrande agriturismo — was supposed to be about sublime, home-cooked Italian food, made with local ingredients … and it turned out to be about the leftovers from the birthday party earlier in the day. The moral of the tourism story being … online reviews may be helpful but they’re not failsafe.

So, back up the Sicilian coast, through the tunnels below the rock of Taormina, half surprised the weight of tourists didn’t crush the tunnel, up to the crazy streets of Messina and to the ferry port, the short trip across the strait and then the l-o-n-g drive back up the lower half of the Italian boot, from San Giovanni north on the A3 autostrade, and the last days of our Italian trip.

Somehow, it seemed even more harrowing than the drive down, a week before, and I didn’t know that was possible. I was at the wheel all the way, and I had the jangled nerves to prove it. The experience included long stretches of torn up and narrowed highway, because of construction, and two long detours off the autostrade completely … one that took us through some amazing Alpine-like scenery near Lago Negro in southern Campania, but also lengthened our drive by, oh, a full hour.

By the time we got to our making-it-up-as-we-go next destination, Vietri, we had been on the road for almost nine hours and had some crabby campers. The moral of this story being, from the tourists’ perspective … the road may look like a straight line on your Michelin map, but in real life it is turns and more turns and lots of gear changes and at least a half-dozen “we could be killed” moments …

Leah had espied the signs for Vietri on the way south, the week before. She knew it to be the center of ceramics production – talking crockery, plates here – for all of southern Italy. Vietri also represents the first stop on the Amalfi Coast, on the south side of the Sorrento Peninsula. And when she found a hotel overlooking the water, at a nice price … well, it was a done deal.

If we could find it. Vietri is another of those built-into-a-cliff towns that seem to represent urban living in coastal areas south of Naples. The A3, as it goes by Vietri, is doing its own hang-to-the-cliff thing, and it turns out there is no offramp for Vietri if you are driving north. So, past Vietri, off the autostrade, back on, heading south — at almost exactly in the same place where we were doing the Angri Follies during our disastrous Ravello outing the week before.

Off the A3 at the top of a hill … 10 minutes weaving through little towns, and then the plunge down to the sea. Switchbacks between ancient buildings, dodging other little cars, down, down, down. At one point I saw a sign for “Bristol Hotel” — our destination — but had a choice of three narrow streets. I took the middle, and was right. Don’t know why. Just did. Got lucky.

Our luck almost changed disastrously a moment later when, in the gloaming, I was prepared to follow a “Bristol Hotel” arrow to the right — but that would have sent us pitching down a flight of stairs. (To give you an idea of how narrow the roads are; I was ready to drive down some stairs.) Someone sitting on the right side of the car saw the stairs just as I was turning onto them. I hit the brakes.

Then, across the street, another sign for the Bristol … but it’s not there, either, that’s just a parking lot that I’m halfway into … back out, down the hill, down down down … and there is the sea and there is the little three-star hotel, hacked into the cliff. Of course. With parking for about six cars, and we are driving one of them.

We (and there were six of us in two cars) rallied on the terrace of the hotel restaurant at 8, and drank white wine till 9, when the one waiter shooed us into the dining room (it was almost quittin’ time for the little guy), and brought us some nice, semi-pricey (by Italy standards) food, some pasta but mostly seafood. The octopus and squid were quite good. I had the grilled seafood mix, which included shrimp, a small chunk of swordfish (pesce spada), squid steak (not as rubbery as usual) and a very nice local fish known as orata.

We also had several bottles of Falanghina wine … Falanghini being the grape. We had some from at least two producers, and the two newcomers to the group decided they also preferred the Taburno version we had been drinking back in Massa Lubrense. There was a bottle of Greco de Tufo, as well. All quite nice.

At 10 or so, the waiter, in white dinner jacket (including bow tie), none-too-subtly indicated they were closing up shop — we had been the only diners, aside from two people in a corner of a very big room — and there we went.

It was too early to turn in, so after asking the Julie Foudy lookalike at the front desk (obscure women’s soccer reference) where to go for gelato … we found ourselves weaving down the street toward the beaches and ports and unofficial fun zone of Vietri. The six of us, ranging from not-young to certainly-not-young, walking past a packed bar with a live band, past a fish restaurant that was doing great business at 10:30, Vespas weaving past … and down to the square, where small bars and space to sit seemed to have attracted every kid between the ages of 15 and 25. But we found a bench, and did the gelato thing, and while I stuck to the tried-and-true limone, a couple of us tried the ciaccolato nero (dark chocolate) flavor, and it was declared a major hit. We lingered for a bit, letting the sea breeze blow over us, and watching the kids. Oh, and wide, white belts are apparently coming back, if Italian youth have anything to sat about it, and they usually do. Remember you saw it here in June of 2010 – wide, white belts. Really. In California by the end of the year.

Rather than have everyone walk all the way back up to the hotel, I went back to get the Fiat wagon, but someone decided it would be undignified for one of the five passengers to be stuck in the back of the hatchback, and by the time I had walked up and driven down, three were nearly at the hotel, and I picked up only two for the ride up to the rooms. Good night.

Next day in Vietri we focused on the two things you do while there … other than just veg. Go to see the ruins of Pompei and visit some ceramic shops.

Summer has arrived in this part of Italy. Not in terms of calendar, but certainly in terms of temperature. It was in the middle 80s, with humidity, everywhere south of Rome … and a week after dodging rain just a few miles away, we were breaking a sweat just walking outside.

Up the hill, to the autostrade, about 10 miles north and there we are, in the modern city of Pompeii, which is known only for one thing — the excavated ruins of old Pompeii.

Pompeii was destroyed by an eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius in the year 79. The way they have pegged it (thanks to the historian Pliny the Younger), the town was hit by an earthquake on Aug. 23. Not a big one. Not like one they had experienced in the year 62, which knocked down a big part of the town. But big enough to get the attention of the people in a city of some 50,000 people.

On Aug. 24, 79, Vesuvius went off. Ash began blanketing the city. Within a few hours, it was several feet deep. Some people fled out into Naples Bay, which was only 200 yards from the city, back then (it’s 1.5 miles, now). Most stayed behind, waiting for Vesuvius to chill out.

Instead, it got horribly worse. On Aug. 25, a huge blast of hot gas escaped the volcano and blew across the town, incinerating people who were in the open and searing the lungs and suffocating everyone else. Within an hour or so, everyone in the town was dead, and before Vesuvius stopped belching ash and flame … the thriving city of Pompeii was buried by 15-35 feet of ash. Gone, just like that.

The disaster for the Roman residents of the city … turned into a boon for historians when excavations on the site began in 1748. It was discovered that much of the town — built of stone and marble – still stood under the ash, which had hardened into pumice, a light rock that protected the town from the elements for nearly two millennia.

Now, 260 years later, about 25 percent of the old city has been excavated and/or restored, and it is an astonishing look into daily life in the early Roman Empire. The roads, the houses, the shops, nearly all of them still there. Some missing roofs, but the walls … still there. The killer gas cloud and subsequent ash-burial froze Pompeii in a moment of time, and visitors can still get an idea of the paintings the Romans put on their walls, and the mosaics they inland into their floors. Even graffiti is still visible on the sides of buildings, much of it about preferred candidates in a coming election.

Four of us just wandered around for a while … when one of those enterprising free agents of the tourist world, a self-proclaimed Pompeii guide, negotiated a group rate for a one-hour tour of the half-dozen most memorable sights. (He cost us 32 euro, about $40.) He was a bit eccentric, but his English was understandable, though his vocabulary was limited. “Is very, very important!” was his favorite line. But he got us “behind the ropes” at a bakery, showing us what appeared to be a pizza oven, into the stable where the nearly complete skeleton of a horse was found (and has been reassembled); he pointed out the phallic paintings that indicated a house of prostitution (25 such sites have been discovered in the city so far, he said) and the phallic symbol that was just up on a wall for good luck. “A fertility symbol,” he said. Eventually, he took us to “the dead bodies” — pronounced “ze ded-uh bodeez-uh.” At an end of a courtyard, archaeologists have placed a half-dozen white forms of ancient Romans or slaves who died as the burning gas seared the city. One is a child, face down. Another is a mother with a small child. Another woman appears to be covering her face with her arm. Frozen in death. If I understand it correctly, when workers broke into strange gaps in the ash layers, someone soon decided that the “bubble” had been formed by bodies, and a scientist had the idea of making a cast of the “bubble” … and there was the figure of a person. Fascinating and chilling and pathetic, all at once. You can’t help but look up at Vesuvius, not active but not dead, having erupted as recently as 1944, and wonder when it might become a killer again.

In terms of tourism, it was the highlight of the trip. I had seen the National Geographic stuff, and read accounts of the final days of Pompeii (and probably seen some shlocky sand-and-sandals movie), but to actually walk the streets of the city, to see the store fronts and the bedrooms and the patios and fountains … the real thing … is quite memorable.

The rest of the afternoon … those interested in ceramics did the ceramics thing. I got online in the terrace bar at the hotel and caught up on USC’s punishment, and the Lakers losing Game 4 of the Finals and the baseball boxscores, and blogging … and went directly into Mexico vs. South Africa. I watched it in the lobby, and some of the employees would come by from time to time to inquire about the score, but it was mostly just me. Mexico dominated the game, but pressed so hard to score that it left itself open for counterattacks, one of which netted a goal. Mexico scored in the 79th minute to tie, and there was your 1-1 final.

That evening, we had drinks at the bar that had been rocking the night before (turns out the live band had been for someone’s huge 60th-birthday party), and then went across the street to the Pescadore ristorante, which was quite good and stunningly inexpensive. We each were given a glass of sparkling wine for showing up early … and at the end we each got a free taste of some massively potent apple-liqueur (digestivo), perhaps for running up the largest tab of the night. Diners came in late, many after 10. We shared three antipasti (lots of squid, octopus and tomatoes), pasta with clams, regular ricotta ravioli (for me) … and, as usual, it was all nicely done, modest but honest and fresh. The way the Italians do it. And after that, we were back to the gelaterria from the night before, and the evening ended with the same bonhomie of another fun-but-under-control night on a little Italian town.

The next morning, we rallied enough to pack, load the cars and head north. Four of us to Rome. Two to Naples and the Pompei museum (some of the best stuff has been moved into Naples) … before going to Rome and the airport.

The four survivors went directly to a restaurant in Santa Marinella, a little seaside town north of the airport and south of Civatevecchia, west of Rome. We were intent on a restaurant around the corner from where we had eaten 15 days before, on our first night in Italy, and luckily it was open for lunch. Many Italian restaurants don’t do lunch, but summer is here, and it was a Saturday, and they were open and we did one last ridiculously nice but not expensive meal while looking over the Mediterranean, clinked glasses to commemorate a vacation with far more upsides than down … and trundled back to the hotel near Da Vinci where we would spend a short night before going to the airport in the morning.

The end of the trip. Well, almost the end. Still have to get back. I am trying to file this from Istanbul, on the way back to Abu Dhabi. And Ghana just took a 1-0 lead on Serbia.

Back in Abu Dhabi, it will be 95 degrees — when we land at 2 a.m.

Tomorrow, the scheduled high … 109. Yikes.