Our Excellent Italian Adventure – Part 6
Thirty-Two Stops to Sorrento
To continue our story from last time, we made our train from Rome to Naples and had to connect to another train to get to our final destination: Sorrento.
Sorrento is on the southern edge of the Bay of Naples and part of the Amalfi Peninsula. Sorrento also happens to be the southern part of Italy that we will be visiting on this trip.
The train that we had to catch at the Napoli Centrale train station was called the Circumvisuviana. In the Napoli station, we found the place to buy the tickets for the Circumvesuviana and boarded the train.
Once boarded, we realized that this was more of a subway than a train. This fact was hammered home when we looked up the route map which showed Napoli Centrale on one side of the chart and Sorrento on the other … with 31 stops in between.
Because the train was pretty crowded when we boarded, we were all standing near the doors next to our luggage. We ended up standing almost all of the way to Sorrento – a trip that took over an hour. Nonetheless, we arrived in Sorrento a bit tired but none the worse for wear. We found a taxi which we took to the Hotel Belair, where we are staying and checked into our rooms.
When we got to our room, Barb and I opened the door to our balcony to take a look at the view and were floored at the spectacular view of the bay that we had. We both later agreed that it was on par with the stunning view that we had in our room in Santorini, Greece overlooking the Aegean Sea, which we experienced on our honeymoon.
After settling in, we went to Peter and Liz’s room and found that they had been upgraded to a large room with two balconies overlooking the bay. I guess that it’s sometimes better to be lucky than careful. 🙂
The Jet Set Life on Capri
It’s Tuesday today and we had planned on going to the island of Capri (pronounced: cap-ree, not ca-pree) which is located about 10Km from Sorrento and accessible by ferry We bought our tickets and the boat ride took about 30 minutes to get to the island.
Unfortunately, it was pouring rain that morning but the rain soon stopped after our arrival there.
Capri was originally a Roman-occupied island but is now only occupied by the jet set crowd and a few million tourists visiting each year.
When you get to Capri harbour, there is a small lower town but most of the activity is in the upper town reachable by a funicular which shuttles people up and down the hill.
Once at the top, the streets of Capri are filled with shops and restaurants along its tiny narrow streets. Most of the shops are selling the same kinds of items which usually have something to do with lemons as this is a common commodity in this part of Italy. Wall hangings, cookware, you name it all have some kind of lemon design on them and are for sale.
Another popular item being sold in this area of Italy is a liqueur called Limoncello which, of course, is made from lemons.
It is sold everywhere.
One store was handing out samples of Limoncello and Barb and Liz wanted to buy a bottle. Peter and I looked at each other and both agreed that it tasted like a lemon-flavoured Robitussin cough syrup and encouraged them to pass on that option. We didn’t try to be too vocal about our opinions about Limoncello as I’m sure that to express distaste for it publicly is probably an arrestable offense in this region.
In addition to the lemon motif, there are lots of high-end clothing stores here obviously catering to the celebrity crowd that frequents Capri. Within a 5 block stretch, we had two Prada and two Salvatore Ferragamo stores alone. If you have money to spend, Capri has stores to help you spend it.
We had lunch while we were there and afterwards, Peter wanted to try and find the location of the Roman emperor Tiberius’ villa called Villa Jovus which was located on the island.
We ended up marching up this steep path headed out of Capri town and soon dropping Barb and Liz at the side of the road on a bench to wait for our return. After going for another kilometer or so, Peter decided that the map still showed that the Villa was several more kilometers further down the road so we turned back. As it had turned sunny by this point it seemed to be far more work that Peter wanted to spend today and I was more than happy to agree.
After doing a bit more shopping on the way back, we took the funicular back down and returned to Sorrento by boat as we arrived.
Misery Loves Company
I didn’t mention this but our plans to avoid getting sick seem to have not been up to the mark. Starting on Saturday in Rome I started to get sick with a cold and suffered through a few days of misery – unfortunately overlapping the day we arrived in Sorrento which, of course, involved lifting heavy luggage up and down stairs and trains.
Yesterday night, as I was starting to feel better, Barb started to complain of the same symptoms, and tonight Peter as well. I suspect that both of them will be in for a few rough days as I had but when on holidays “taking it easy” in bed is not always the first priority in mind when there are all kinds of things to see and do.
In my case, I was lucky that I got sick at the end of our stay in Rome so I had already seen almost everything that I wanted to see there but we’d only just arrived in Sorrento. I know that for Peter, one of the highlights of the trip for him is to visit the ruins of Pompeii which is close by here so he doesn’t have too many chances to see it while in Sorrento.
Winding Along the Amalfi Coast
It’s Wednesday today and we have passed our first week in Italy. It’s hard to believe that it’s been that long as the days seem to just fly by.
One of the mundane tasks that need to be taken care of around this time is that we need to get some laundry done. As we normally carry about a week’s worth of clothes on any trip, a weekly laundry task is a necessary chore.
As Liz and I were the only ones who were up to it, we got up early and spent a few hours at the local laundromat this morning.
Later on that day, we prepared for a big outing as we were going to be gone the whole day traveling along the southern part of the Amalfi peninsula which is simply known as the Amalfi Coast. Before we left on our trip Barb had arranged to purchase tickets to a piano concert in a town called Ravello which is about 50 km away from Sorrento.
Between Sorrento and Ravello were a few towns that we were going to visit so we got to our final destination in stages. Our first part of the trip was a bus ride from Sorrento to Positano.
We took a bus to Positano but ended up having to stand the entire 1-hour trip as the bus was so full. This turned out to be more than a small inconvenience as the road from Sorrento to Positano (and along the whole Amalfi Coast for that matter) is a series of twists and turns. The whole 60 minutes of the trip was holding onto the rails with both hands as the bus lurched from left to right. When we weren’t turning along hairpin curves, we were going along 1000-foot cliffs 18 inches off the side of the bus.
If we weren’t hanging on for dear life, we would have been able to enjoy the spectacular views of the Mediterranean.
Once we arrived in Positano, we could see what the attraction was all about. It was a stunning hillside town stretching from up the side of the mountain down to the turquoise water at the beach.
We walked down about 1000 steps from the bus stop to finally get down to the beach level of the town. Once down to the water, there are mostly restaurants and small shops up and down the streets.
Peter’s eye was caught by a small piece of artwork being sold by a street vendor. He noticed that the print was from an artist of whom Peter had another print at home so he thought that the 2nd one would be a good match for the one that he already had.
We had lunch in Positano at a small outdoor restaurant that had an overhead canopy of green leaves providing shade from the strong sun that day. A simple meal of panini sandwiches just hit the spot after the workout walking down all those stairs.
Sidebar: we have all commented that with all of the walking that we’ve been doing since arriving in Italy, there’s little chance of any of us gaining any weight from all of the restaurant food that we’re eating. Our only concern is that our next destination in Tuscany will involve having a car so the amount of walking may soon be dropping considerably. 🙁
From Positano, we boarded the ferry and went along the coast to our next destination: the town of Amalfi.
Amalfi is a much smaller town than Positano and whose main attraction is a 1000-year-old cathedral in the town’s square. We only stayed in Amalfi for a couple of hours while waiting for our bus to our final destination of Ravello. While walking around Amalfi, Peter left his rolled-up artwork on a ledge and for a while had some frantic minutes looking for it. Luckily everything was recovered.
Only about a 20-minute bus ride down the winding (always winding) highway, we disembarked in Ravello.
Ravello is not along the coast but much further up the mountain and we noticed immediately that it was much cooler there – also due to the sun going down around that time.
All around Ravello were posters from the Ravello Concert Society showing the musical performances for which Ravello was now famous. Held throughout the year, most of the music was of the classical type but with a variety of different types of musicians in each performance. For our concert that night, it would be a solo pianist playing a variety of Mozart, Beethoven, and Ravel pieces.
As we had a chance to walk around Ravello and have dinner before the concert started, the first thing that we noticed was how authentic the town was. By this, I mean that the normal trappings of a tourist-driven economy town (i.e.: the endless shops with the postcard racks in front selling the same merchandise as the previous 50 stores). None of these were to be found.
In the large town square were only children playing football, a small wedding party coming out of the church and the occasional elderly person sitting on benches watching everyone else. If you were to watch a movie about a small Italian town, it would probably look just like this.
We ended up at a restaurant called Garden (via Boccaccio 4) where we sat outside on their heated balcony with a breathtaking view of the Italian coastline heading off towards the horizon. I had a lamb main course, Barb a beef tenderloin and Liz and Peter both had a spaghetti with clams dish. Along with the two bottles of red wine that night, the owner served us a delicious bruschetta topped with fresh chopped tomatoes and olive oil.
We all agreed that this dinner was the high water mark of our culinary experiences in Italy so far.
To be honest, by the time the concert was ready to start (which was around 9:30), we had done so much that day so far that I was ready to go to sleep. I’ll confess that classical music isn’t exactly my passion so this didn’t help me stay awake.
Nonetheless, I managed to avoid nodding off and since our seats were in the 2nd row about 10ft. from the pianist, we had no trouble seeing the action.
I’ll leave it by saying the concert was interesting. I’ll let Barb, Liz, and Peter provide more in-depth analysis when you talk to them.
We had arranged in advance to have a taxi driver waiting for us outside of the concert hall and we took the (still winding) road back to our hotel in Sorrento. Considering the convoluted way that we got to Ravello, a direct ride back home was appreciated considering that it it was after midnight when we got back to our hotel by taxi.
Winding Down
We all agreed that today (Thursday, the day after our trip to Ravello), it would be a take-it-easy day with nothing planned. Barb and Liz are hanging out by the pool and I’m up on the balcony in our room putting the final touches on this update while simultaneously appreciating the view of the Bay of Naples. We may take a walk into town later on but other than that we won’t be doing anything really interesting today.
Tomorrow, Peter, Liz, and Barb plan on going to visit the ruins at Pompeii which is just a ferry ride across the bay. I had already told them that I wasn’t interested in doing this so I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing tomorrow. I’ll probably decide sometime tonight.
Baden
