The view of the Bay of Naples on our way to Sorrento
Okay, so I'm miserable at keeping this thing up to date!! Confirmed. We got back about two weeks ago from a 10 day trip back to Italy. We have tried to cram all of our big and "south" trips into the late winter/early spring to catch some warmer weather. We succeeded on our previous two trips to Italy and Greece and managed to catch another wonderful wave of weather - no rain whatsoever and warm, beautiful days.
Our little street where we "lived" and the apartment interiorI have to admit that this trip was probably the most beautiful scenery we have seen along with Switzerland. We flew into Naples on Easter Sunday (after hunting Easter eggs of course) and took a special tour type bus to Sorrento - about an hour and 15 minutes around the bay. Naples is the most densely populated city in western Europe so we couldn't get out of there fast enough (real Mafia town). All we saw out the bus windows were somewhat dilapidated high-rise apartment buildings with balconies laden with drying laundry!! It was pretty depressing. Everyone we had talked with said that Sorrento was the place to stay. Now we understand! It is still quaint but definitely "cleaned up" for the tourists. It's a mecca for the Brits and there were lots of them there as the British kids were on school holiday that week as well. Our kids enjoyed getting to converse with other English speaking kids for a change!
Sorrento itself sits right on the coast and most of the shoreline along the peninsula consists of cliffs that plunge into the sea. We arrived with our entourage of suitcases on wheels and had a 10 minute walk over cobblestone streets to our apartment. What we didn't realize is that we arrived right in the middle of the "passeggiata" - the distinctively Italian nightly stroll. EVERY Italian in Sorrento was walking or shall I say meandering down the street. It is a ritual where you go out before your late dinner and see and be seen. Not exactly easy maneuvering for our group of 9 (4 people and 5 suitcases!) who didn't know for sure where we were going! Anyway, our two bedroom apartment was right in the middle of town and turned out to be huge. It even had it's own balcony for drying our own laundry (P.S. Make sure you know the people below you quite well if you happen to drop undergarments onto their balcony, oops ;) ). The nightly stroll amazed us because when we went out again later it was even crazier and people were just walking right down the street with their strollers etc. Forget the cars and scooters. It was truly a cultural awakening!
It feels like a real city, streets and allOn our first full day we took the train to Herculaneum. A city that was right on the ocean at the time of Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. Unlike, Pompeii, it didn't get demolished, it was just buried by about 95 feet of hot mud and ash!! Many historians think it is much better preserved than Pompeii as the houses are so intact that there are second stories still remaining. It's pretty weird though because they built a new city right on top of the buried city. So, the excavation is significantly smaller because there is modern city built all around it and they can't get to the rest of the archaeological site! It's just like a 100 foot deep pit in the middle of this urban sprawl. Along with "Scavi di Ercolano" we went to the MAV Museum an interactive museum about the ancient site. The girls loved it - it was all high tech and they got to "dust off" frescoes and mosaic floors, "wade through an ancient pool", walk through computerized recreations of some of the buildings. It really made it a lot of fun for them. Upon our return to Sorrento that night we happened upon
Jhonny's Pizza (yes, that's how it's spelled). Jhonny gave us quite a
show with his dough and wood burning oven. He's won a number of awards for his frisbee like
moves (rolling it down his outstretched arms etc.) and also won our business for 4 nights during our stay (anything
to get Karissa to eat dinner - excuse me, I think the proper word would be
"inhale" in this particular case!). It was a lot of fun and quite appropriate since that area of Italy is supposed to be the birthplace of the pizza. Thin and crispy!
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