Blog2022 ≫ Midlife Eurotour part twelve - Sorrento

Got lots of garbled transcribed content for this one, probably in a jumbled up order. This was now the holiday proper, train from Rome to Naples, another train from Naples to Sorrento. A week in Sorrento, including trips out to other places, included Vesuvius and Pompeii. Clare had done this before as a teenager, the boys and I had never been. Exciting!

A trip down to Sorrento from Rome really showed the variety of trains that we can get. The first one from Rome to Naples was a really fast train. Comfortable and fast, it was nice, it was cheap. It was fast. Went up to 300 kilometres an hour at some point which is faster than we have the UK. So from Rome to Naples takes about an hour, and then from there we changed trains.

300kph on the train to Naples

We had a couple of options here of getting a local commuter train (didn't sound so good) or getting a faster air conditioned tourist train. This is supposed to be kind of new, but on doing a bit of research you found people have bought tickets for this supposedly new air conditioned commuter train only to find it didn't really exist and that they ended up on the same same train as everyone else, but for four times the price. I wonder if this can be entirely true but we decided not to risk it, not to risk getting ripped off. So we went for the the cheaper option which was about €4 each to get from Naples down to Sorrento and we are wondering what it's going to be like. The train itself wasn't too bad. Just no aircon, and hard seats like an old style London underground train. Should have been about an hour but turned out longer.

A lot slower on the old style train to Sorrento

Maybe it was longer, felt like it was going to break down any moment. It wasn't as overcrowded as I feared it would be. I had images of us being really jostled about, and someone trying to steal the bags, and basically a lot of bum-pinching. There was none of that. There was just about room for everyone to sit down. There's no way really to store all the bags, so I had a probably slightly irrational fear of bags disappearing out the door, so we're keeping an eye on them all the time, but it was fine. I don't know how many locals really were on this train at this time. I think it probably was still all tourists. It was very hot, and we were sat on the side of the train that was in direct sun. The windows were open , so while the train was moving, it's okay. It was hot. Did I say it was hot? Clare got very uncomfortable, so we got up to stand in the shady side of the train for a bit just to make it more comfortable. It didn't actually break down and we are arrived at Sorrento with all our bags intact and our bottoms unpinched.

Our hotel was only a short walk from the station, very short walk in theory. We couldn't tell which way to go. So I think we did two laps of the station with the bags. Now my rucksack on its own would be bad enough in the heat, but Clare of course brought suitcases, so I was wheeling her suitcase too while she followed the map. Everyone's a bit tired now. Excited to be in Sorrento though.

We're quite amazed by the hotel. Lovely looking lobby, all marble, quite fancy. Looks a bit too posh for us. Checked in, and found our room. Floor two, but because it's set into a side of a hill floor two is at ground level. Outdoor swimming pool was on floor two, and our room was right by that. Sandwiched inbetween our room and the pool was the breakfast room, so our room, breakfast room, then the swimming pool, is a really good location. There's no sea view from the hotel, but where it's set right into the side of a kind of ravine. We had the balcony looking out over the ravine.

Ravine by the side of our hotel

Antiche Mura hotel, Sorrento

The reveal of our room was amazing. We went into the room. It's nice. A little hallway within our own room, opens into our bedroom with wardrobe dressing table. Things you might expect to see in a hotel room but bigger. And then on from there a balcony within the room, and stairs going down to another level where the boys were and they were three beds made up down there. What did they know that we didn't? Maybe they'd just heard that Emu was coming with us and he could have his own bed, nice. There was an ice bucket1 out with prosecco or some kind of Italian fizz in it. How did they do that in this heat? How did they know what time we're going to arrive? I guess it was the aircon in the room kept the ice from melting. But that was a very nice touch. So yeah, absolutely amazing room.

Ice bucket of prosecco waiting for us in our lovely room

I don't think we unpacked much at this point. I think I didn't unpack anyway. We open the proseccon, but didn't drink much of it, and headed out to explore. Went for a look at the pool and I'm going to have to check my pictures to see sequence of events after that if we go straight for a swim in the pool or did we go straight for a walk around Sorrento?

I'll stop the transcription there. From the photos Clare is opening the prosecco at 4:37 and then I have a different drink by the pool by 5:11, and the boys are in the water. So I'm saying we got our trunks on and went straight to the pool!

drink by the hotel pool

Aha, I guessed as much in the next bit:

Is a good chance On the first day we went straight to the pool too in order to drinks from the pool bar. That was very nice. The staff so good at that place. Really nice. Read this before on TripAdvisor at the staff were really good especially on staff member called Nobody and we met him straight away. I still don't know if it is his real name or just for a joke he put "Nobody" on his name tag. Lots of jokes around this. You would ask him things, and he'd say "if anybody asks you, nobody told you to do it" or "Nobody told you you couldn't do it". Things like this, it is a good gag. I might have to rewrite this to make it make more sense2. I think the guys working there definitely look like they were undercover security. That's the impression I got, it is a story I've made up that they are special forces private bodyguards to someone very important having to go undercover as waiters in a hotel. They really look like they could get you out of a situation. I'm probably projecting this entirely onto them, and they were just waiters, but they were really good.

Hotel is also right on the main square of Sorrento. I'll have to fill the name in later but that was a really good spot so it's very busy. Scooters buzzing back and forwards vehicles doing all sorts of dodgy turns and nice big restaurant with lots of outside seating on there called FAuno which we would return to. Then from that square you can see down towards the sea in one direction. So looking at it as a clock with 12:00 facing back up towards our hotel, that's the side Fauno restaurant is on. Then at 3:00 it goes down into the shopping lanes, narrow streets with restaurants and shops, and then at the 6:00 there's some very steep steps going down towards the sea, and then at 9:00 towards some more restaurants and shops and there was a supermarket that way which we'd go in everyday. Really nice location.

On our first night Clare had booked a restaurant called The Foreigners Club which she heard was good. Actually she'd heard food was so so, but the location and the view was amazing, and it really was. We're out on a big outdoor seating terrace just directly overlooks the bay. So you have a view over Vesuvius and everything. I guess that's the bay of Naples we're looking out onto. The "so so food" was really good too. It would set a bit of a template for the rest of our trip. Think I had tomato pasta and the boys have pizzas or maybe the other way around. I bet they had pizza on the first day and we found something quite popular. There is the marinara pizza which is a pizza with no cheese. Very simple. Always the cheapest option on the menu. I suppose it's not much more than garlic bread with tomato on tomato and basil and garlic and really tasty. And while the boys love pizza they are not keen on buffalo mozzarella, the other big feature, so this was good for them and it's vegan too. So good for me. I think we would have a variation on this meal most days. Same food. Same drinks but maybe there was wine. Probably there was a spritz, Aperlo Spritz or Lemoncello Spritz, also known as Sorrento Spritz. The boys would have Coke zeroes and that would come to about 90 euros. It was not cheap when you consider we are having to eat out for every meal, but mostly we were having a big breakfast in the hotel, making it through not having a proper lunch, and then a dinner out. Not all inclusive, which makes you drink more, and we're with the boys so we couldn't go out drinking on our own, so really not drinking a lot at all, but it was very nice. I don't think I overate or over drank on this trip.

Pool area is not that big. I mean it's a very small kidney shaped pool. None of the water slides and larking about that I think the boys would really have liked, but it was really nice. The hotel only probably has about 50 rooms so there's plenty of room for everyone around this pool, so they were loungers out chairs and tables out and we'd always have room. There's no problem about having to go down early in to get a good spot. They're all good spots. It was all lemon trees around the hotel, around the pool area too. Now they weren't many ripe fruits on the trees. We don't know if they can just been just pick them all to make limoncello from. There were some green fruits on the trees and the odd yellow one. I was expecting to see loads of ripe lemons everywhere and just reaching out and picking one while set at the pool but there were few ripe fruits. I didn't think it was on to just pick one. Still very nice though. We'd have occasional flies buzzing around us around the pool. It was a very grown up pool area, so no water slides. Not really ideal for young kids, so I was definitely shushing them quite a lot saying don't do that, don't annoy people, don't throw the ball, which is a bit of a shame for them, but they had a real good time there. I think we went in the pool everyday. It was a good temperature, , and it was a spa pool as well. Little bonus, so sit on the shallow steps at the edge of the pool and they turn on a load of jets. You don't often get that in a swimming pool and that was really nice.

We would have ended our first day with a walk back to the hotel via the supermarket, pick up some Rose to drink in the room, lovely.

I'll be back in another post with the more on Sorrento and the trips out we did, and maybe more of a day by day breakdown with pictures. The further I get from the holiday the harder this is to write...

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Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Married + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web developr, + I do js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation and other diy jiggery-pokery, history, genealogy, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.