Sorrento

The view from our Sorrento hotel room - a cruise ship sailing past Capri.

We are now in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast, just south of Naples. We'll be here for four nights, during which we plan to visit the nearby sights of Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi and Paestum.

Yesterday morning we left Puglia and drove about three hours across Italy to the opposite coast. We had some difficulty getting started, due to ambiguous directions from our sat-nav, but eventually got cruising west on the Autostrada. The middle of the country was quite pretty, with green rolling hills.

But then we started to approach Naples. Things got poor, ugly and dirty quite quickly. We avoided Naples itself, but unfortunately our sat-nav-guided route took us off the Autostrada and through a small town so we could experience the metropolitan area up close. Here the road was filled with teeth-clattering potholes, and with garbage. The Naples area is never very nice, but it has been even worse over the past year because they have a garbage crisis. Due to various reasons, the garbage is no longer picked up. So it is just everywhere.




It really makes you appreciate the infrastructure we tend to take for granted.


The name of this town, not far from the scenes above, seemed appropriate.

But things improved once we got on the Sorrento Peninsula and we are now in a nice area. Sorrento is filled with hotels and is very touristy, but having been off the beaten track in Puglia for over a week, we absolutely love it. The staff at our hotel speak English! And nearly everyone else around town is from Britain or Germany, mostly the former! Magnificent.


Sorrento

We are staying at the Best Western Hotel La Solara. The hotel room is clean and adequate but not that impressive; kind of 80s motel-ish. But the location and the views are to die for! We could hardly believe it when we opened the door to our balcony and saw this:



And our balcony is huge, with a little table and chairs and room to lay out in the sun if we wanted. Wow. I reserved a room without a sea view because it was a lot cheaper, but they put us in one anyway for the same price. God bless the low season.


And then there's the heated pool and sun chairs! Those day trips are starting to sound like too much work...

We were starved when we arrived at the hotel around 3:30pm and, since we are a couple miles out of town, disappointed to read that the hotel restaurant is only open for lunch from 12 to 3. We asked the man at the front desk for advice on lunch and to our surprise he said, "I'll make something for you! Come with me." He led us out to a table by the pool, brought us menus, and opened the poolside snack bar just for us. So nice. We split a pizza and David had some excellent bruschetta. Very overpriced, naturally, but also delicious and convenient.



Thus fortified, we made the steep 15-minute descent, along a narrow road lined with olive and lemon groves, to the nearest beach. It isn't the sort you'd lay out on, but it's a nice little fishing harbor with a few pizzerias and great views of Mt. Vesuvius.





That's Vesuvius in the background. Still active, so we hope it behaves itself while we're here.


On the slow hike back up the hill we met this friendly kitty, who mewed at us and came down from his perch to be petted.

Then it seemed a little early to settle into the hotel for the evening, so we hopped on the hourly shuttle minibus into the city centre (a very useful service). Sorrento was more enjoyable than we expected, with outdoor cafes on a broad boulevard and narrow lanes lined with interesting shops, most of which sold products having to do with lemons.


Pretty 16th-century church, also lemon-themed.


One big surprise was looking down from one of the main roads and seeing this! Don't know anything about it except that those are the old city walls on the left, but it was like a lost world down there.

We spent just an hour in Sorrento, but will likely return for dinner on another night. On the bus back we chatted with a young couple from near Bath, which was really nice. And when we walked out on our balcony upon our return, a 60s-ish British man from the balcony up above startled us a bit with a "Good evening." (The balconies are staggered so he can see us when we walk out to the end.) He told us he was watching for a big cruise ship, which normally goes by around this time. Later, we spotted it, and took the photo at the top of this post. We were afraid our neighbor had missed it, but soon he emerged along with his wife and another couple. One of the women sighed, "Ah, isn't it lovely..."

It's good to be back on the beaten track for a little while.