Just found these notes on the final part of our holiday, to Sorrento, Italy! I did write up some of Sorrento didn't I? Maybe not. Here goes, I am quoting myself again because this is some nonsense dictation. I will fix it up where I can and maybe add more.
We booked some day trips on this holiday "because you have to". I think we booked too much for only a 7-day stay there, booked 3 days out. I should have said no please. I think we could have avoided some of them but we did a day trip to Capri. This wasn't booked actually. We did it all by ourselves so got off early. Went down to the harbour for tickets for the ferry to Capri and traveled around under our own steam. Still pretty expensive to do it like this. I don't know if we could have done it any cheaper going in a group. We got the ferry over there, and then we queued up for a local bus, and that took us up to the kind of "next level" and then we took the chair lift to the top. It was a real good experience but it did take us a whole day to get up to this including an expensive taxi ride around the island, and some walking around Capri around the shops and bars and cafes of Capri. Was it worth taking a day away from swimming time to do this? I don't think so really. If we could have done that in half a day just on the chair lift come back that would have been a lot better for me. Capri town itself is a lot of very swanky designer shops so it doesn't feel like a sort of place I should be. And I'm not the type to be wowed by imagining I live that lifestyle where I'm buying Gucci and Armani all the time. Maybe it's a treat for some people, but I'd rather have spent that time exploring more of Sorrento.
Likewise, another day trip that we did, an actual organized one where we had a driver to take us around Positano and Amalfi and somewhere else. I didn't like that much at all. There was quite a lot of time in this people carrier, and though it was comfortable enough, it was an hours drive to go and look at another town and the other town hasn't got any more going for it than Sorrento does itself, so I really could have spent that day just in Sorrento. We only had an hour or two in each of the towns. And none were any better than where we come from. So for me it's a lot like when we have a day off at home, and it's a sunny day here, and we take the day and we go and drive inland to a worse town than where we live. Why? Why are we doing this? So if I was going to Sorrento again, and we were there for a week again, I would say No I'm not going to spend the day doing that.
What a lot of complaining. I did enjoy the holiday, but I didn't enjoy that day out.
Our third day trip was worth doing. This was an organized one again on an actual coach this time but wasn't perfect. So the bits we booked were really good. We went to Pompeii for the morning and we had a guided tour around Pompeii which is amazing. I've never been there before and it's really good. We couldn't fit enough of it in in the time that we had there, but somehow the trip managed to find time to take us to a jewelery carving demonstration. Slightly cheeky like okay, we'll take you to a toilet stop now, and your toilet stop is here inside this shop and hey, just stop and watch this demonstration, and if you'd like to buy anything then you can, and then use the toilet here. I must write more about Pompeii later and I must have lots of pictures to share.
I really must do this.
Personally, the more interesting, more moving things, including the classic where you see the kind of not fossilized but fossilized bodies in the position really where they died, we didn't really see that, we only saw two of these. I think some might have been moved, but there's a lot. There's a lot more there in between our morning Pompeii and our later activities. We had a really good lunch. We stopped in this vineyard part way up Vesuvius and had a very quick lunch with all of the people on the coach, but it was lovely. I was surprised they were able to cope with a vegan but had a nice starter which was cold cuts for everyone else and just grilled vegetables and bread for me. But it was really really good, and we had wine. We had three different glasses of their wine, to taste the wine that they make it this vineyard. They grow their grapes of course to make their wine. They must grow all their own vegetables too, 's a great location for this sort of thing, so that was lovely. They brought around cake as a pudding which I couldn't eat that one. I know when I sit in fact and then they brought around a little liquer type thing they also make which was really nice again. Main was simple tomato pasta, but there were extra helpings of that too. I think that may have been favorite meal of the whole trip. Only slightly rushed, back on the coach and on to Vesuvius.
Vesuvius is really cool too. Basically a big climb up a hill, not even much of a climb. It's a walk up a steep path, but it's very hot. It was very hard for one of ours, thing 11 actually found it quite heavy going, thing 2 was much more sprightly. Yeah quite hard in the hot sun, so there are stopping points part way up. The bus drives quite a long way up Vesuvius, and then there's a car park, and then you have a timed slot where you're allowed to go on Vesuvius on the last walk up to the top, to the crater, so thing two and I race ahead a little bit. We left Claire and and thing one behind slightly. I was thinking that maybe they catch us up or maybe we catch them up on the way back. It didn't quite work out. We got a bit separated there. Everyone went up to the top. They stopped at the first bit of the top. You could, and thing two and I just kept walking around the crater, so some really good views from up there. Some good pictures but quite difficult to get it all in in one picture when you're right on the crater of the volcano, and it's a big big crater it's hard to get a picture. There's a little bar at the top which is nice, I had some of the Vesuvius wine up there. Very very small glass, not much more than a spoonful really. But lovely opportunity and then thing two had a drink and some crisps and we headed back down again. We didn't see Clare and thing one until we were back on the coach again. We were among the last people back to the coach. We weren't very last, so I didn't get it completely wrong.
On the way back from here slightly cheekily again they said there's another toilet stop. We know you'll need a toilet stop and we stopped again and another place for a little demonstration and sales pitch so these are ok. But they should have been clear that this was part of a tour. We probably could have done without this, and without the first one and had a lot more time in Pompeii, but maybe that's what makes the trip affordable. That's what makes the price look good, because they're being subsidised by these places. I would look out for that. If you're booking one of these trips then look out for what "bonus extras" they're going to put in that you don't really want. This all made for a very full, very hot day. I'm sure we had time to go back in the pool at the end of this day before heading out for dinner.
I will be back with more of this later.
And now I am back! Editing some more content a few weeks even later:
Everything's in the wrong order, but I'm just remembering a really good lunch we had on the last day. This would be a very last day, when we had already checked out of the hotel. We checked out by 11:00 after going in the pool for the last time, and we weren't being picked up until half three. We had the idea that we wouldn't be able to use the facilities after checking out, so we didn't plan on that, but when we checked out they said "we'll keep a tab open for you, go back around the pool and order from the bar until you get collected". But instead we just left our bags and headed into Sorrento again for the last time, and we headed to place called something like "All The Small Things". But I know it's not that because that's a Blink 182 song. It's called something like that. All the good things. And it's the number one rated restaurant on TripAdvisor. And you can't book in advance but we went there and it was fine. They had a table, we sat down and we had a really lovely lunch there. So very similar to all the other meals we had, but had some really nice bruschetta and probably some wine and probably some pasta or pizzas. I will look because I know I've got pictures of this place and of us eating so that'll be good and yet that made a really nice lunch. We had coffee to follow because we were eating our meal at lunch time instead of late in the evening and we don't like to have coffee too late, and the boys had coffee too. They've suddenly decided they like coffee. So thing one ordered his own espresso here, thing two had a taste of it too and they are keen to use my coffee machine now that we're home again. I wonder how long that will last but it's it's fine. It's better they come home with a taste for coffee and a taste for limoncello.
Actually I can remember on the first day now. The first thing we did I went for a walk while Clare was unpacking, and arranged to meet back at the bar. I walked all the way down to the harbour area, and it feels like a kind of Folkestoney Stade part. Is it the older part where right down on the beach and it felt not quite so fancy down there and I was walking down to look for a restaurant that there had heard of called The Dolphin. It's nice steep walk down there. The dolphin itself was no good for us, it was all fish, but a nice place to walk around the beaches. What there are of the beaches in Sorrento are a bit odd, they are kind of private areas. I don't know if they owned by hotels, or connected to hotels or bars, or whether they license them or what but you really have to pay just to go on them and they tend to build out her a jetty and then have tables on the jetty and you can swim from the jetty. There's no free access to the beach in Sorrento. I didn't go out onto any of these at this time but we would return to this and it would be very nice.
On one of our walks we came across a church. Well, it looked like the entrance to a church and there was a wedding going on there and we thought "are we allowed to walk through here?". And we nearly turned back, but thought that looks like a public area beside that church. So we went through there and found a lovely place to sit, a nice cafe again with the great view over Vesuvius and over the bay and we sat there and played card games with the boys. We did this a couple of days and we had our cocktails. This is where Clare found another variation on the spritz called pink lady. It had something else in it and that's the spot in the picture I posted the other day with the saw2 spritz.
The restaurant called Fauno that was right on the square is somewhere we would go back to a couple of times. That was good. I thought it was really good. It's the kind of place that shouldn't be good because it's right on the square. You know, very obvious. Lots of customers there but good food. Worked really well. We had the same sort of things we had before. I really like this one because they had a proper vegan page in their menu so I could order with confidence there. They were a few times, two or three times where I got something that wasn't quite right, I couldn't get quite what I wanted, but this one it was easy. I could order off the vegan menu. Also the second time we went to this place They didn't have a table for us right away. They said tell you what come inside. Have a free drink while you wait for the table. So while I'm fantasizing about opening my own Sorrento themed cafe / restaurant / bar and quitting my job, that's definitely one of the features that I'm going to have for my restaurant. They were people queuing outside the restaurant for tables and they said to us "come on in and have a free glass of prosecco while you wait for your table". Now, a small glass of prosecco isn't costing very much, and to guarantee you that customer's going to stay and eat their dinner. So right, price worth paying and very small investment for a good return. I've got some more ideas on my dream cafe bar restaurant. I won't give away these things for free. I can make notes here while I'm dictating my thoughts as I walk along though3...
Estimated 658 cups of coffee from my barista pro4 probably comes to £1.71 a cup (including actual coffee and now servicing4 but not the 'leccy).
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in Hythe near Folkestone. Wed to Clare + dad to two, I'm a full-stack web engineer, + I do js / Node, some ruby, python, php etc. I like pubbing, running, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.