Sorrento

17th - 20th September 2009

We are currently sitting in the bar area on board our ferry to Sicily. Because we were cheap we didn't bother buying a cabin for the night cruise, instead we're going to have to rough it on one of the couches in the bar. Afterwards I will finally be able to say that I've slept in a bar!

Anyway, we eventually arrived into Sorrento about 6 hours after we set out in Rome. I'm not really sure why it took us that long, because we didn't dilly-dally around, and the journey times weren't that long, but we got there. It involved a 2.5-hour train from Rome to Naples. We thought we'd break for lunch and set off into Naples. We ended up just getting McDonalds because I thought I was going to be mugged, stabbed or raped. The area around the Naples train station was horrendous. We walked quickly and avoided all the African men trying to sell us 'Real Rolex's", "Real iPhones" and authentic Prada, D&G, and Louis Vuitton handbags. We jumped on the 'circumvesuviana', which is a commuter train that connects Naples to Sorrento, via Pompeii. The trip took about an hour and a half and we had to stand the whole way as it was pretty full and there was no where to leave our bags (again due to fear of someone knicking them). The journey was pretty spectacular; the name implied that it circles around Mt Vesuvius, and when it wasn't in a tunnel, the train took us right along the coast around the Bay of Naples.

We got out at Sorrento late afternoon, with pretty good directions to get to our camping ground, again we couldn't find where the buses left from. After 45 minutes we eventually found them in the town square, which was completely full of tourists and restaurants. We jumped on the bus, which took us up a massive, winding road and dropped us at the door of our campground. It was in the most beautiful spot, on top of a cliff over looking Sorrento and the Bay. We got changed and headed down to the campgrounds private beach. It was a pretty decent walk downhill, on a considerably muddy path, but after about 15 minutes we found the sheltered area. I struggle to call it a beach, because you had to enter the water from the end of a jetty as it was completely surrounded by big rocks. It didn't take much convincing to get me in the water, and Dan followed quickly enough. The water was so clear and amazingly warm (The area was completely sheltered from the sun). I put on some goggles that I found down there and went looking at all the fish swimming around. Dan had to practically drag me out of the water and we made the massive trek straight uphill. We were hot again after the walk up so we jumped into the pool!

We ended up having dinner at the camps restaurant. It was super cheap and really delicious. It took me half the pizza to realise that it was missing the tomato base though. We called it a fairly early night, just watching some laptop TV and reading for a bit.

The next morning we thought we'd go and see what the tourist town of Sorrento had on offer. We spent the morning just walking through all the cute little pedestrian streets and looking at all the shops. I was almost going to have some leather thongs made up, until we saw how expensive they were!! We sampled the local favourite 'Limón cello' - lemon liquor that was very very alcoholic and very very lemony. I couldn't have drunk much more.

We had some lunch and then decided to jump on one of the tourist modes of transport. There was two main choices; a little train type thing which was 6 Euros and lasted 30 minutes (and extremely popular), or a tram type bus thing which was 7.50 and lasted an hour. My financial brain made the decision and we went on the much less popular tram bus thing. It basically just took us up the road where our campground was, but a little bit further to a Limón cello brewing type place where we got to sample some more. I tried a berryish type of one and Dan had both lemon and then an orange one. The tram bus thing then took us back down to the town and around a few of the streets (most of which we'd seen when looking for the buses the day before) then back to the main square where we started from. We walked around the town a bit more before we headed back up to the campground. We finished the day with another swim down at the beach and dinner in the restaurant.

We were up early the following day and after collecting lunch and breakfast provision from the town we were on the Circumvesuviana heading for Pompeii. The trip took about 45 minutes, and we were able to buy tickets and walk straight in. The day before we'd bought a guidebook to Pompeii because we'd been warned that once we got there, there would be very little information available. That was wrong as we were given a good map and guidebook that was probably more comprehensive than the one we shelled out 8 Euros for.

Ok so Pompeii is mad. I had to keep reminding myself that these buildings are over 2000 years old. You all should know the story so I'm not going to tell it all again, but I couldn't believe how well preserved the city was. I've found it hard in the past when looking at ruins to imagine how they would've been, but it was easy to do at Pompeii. We spent the whole day there, looking at all the old houses, shops, arenas, theatres and even the local brothel. We had a picnic lunch whilst sitting in the cemetery and drank loads of the water from the old fountains. There were a few plaster models taken from imprints found of people from when they died. You could see that they were all trying to cover their faces or shelter from the smoke and lava. There was a pregnant woman lying trying to protect her face. It was pretty unbelievable stuff.

After Pompeii it was back on the train to Sorrento. We had dinner in town at a nice restaurant and then headed back to the camp ground for an early night. Throughout the evening there was a pretty severe thunderstorm with heaps of lightning and scary thunder. I got a little scared and made Dan jump into my bed and protect me, but it took a lot of yelling to wake him up. I think he'd sleep through anything! I think I was more scared of the roof collapsing in our dodgy little cabin and getting all of my stuff wet!

We were up really early the next morning as we'd booked onto a day tour through the camping company to the island of Capri. We were a bit concerned that it might've been cancelled due to the weather from the night before but all systems were go. We walked down to the little beach where we were to be picked up, and about 40 German school kids also joined us. It took about 30 minutes and we had reached the island. As we were making our way over some locals who knew the boat company let off half a dozen big canon shots, which scared the crap out of me! The boat went around the northern side of the island until we reached the famous 'Blue Grotto' - a cave in the side of the mountain that you can go into and it is lit up all electric blue from the light coming through the small hole. Unfortunately, because of the bad weather the conditions had been too rough to let people in (You have to get into small row boats and lay down while the guy pulls you through on a chain - the opening is only tiny), however it had just opened when we got there. Because of all the people waiting for it to open the waiting time was going to be about 2 hours so we couldn't go in L. The boat did take us into a bigger one 'The Green Grotto', which was pretty spectacular. All the water was a beautiful green and so clear that you could see the rocks on the bottom. After circling half of the island and just taking in the beautiful water and scenery we docked at the 'Marina Piccola' - the small marina - and jumped on a local bus up to the town of Capri. The town was swarming with tour bus groups (we had 6 hours free time on the island, and didn't need to stay as a group), so we decided that our first stop should be to get a map so we couldn't get lost. We were also a bit hungry so we decided that a coffee and 'toast' (toasted ham and cheese sambo) were in order. We sat down at a nearby café and ordered. After eating I went to pay and almost fell over when he told us that it would be 20 Euros. 20 EUROS!!!! For 2 coffees and 2 sandwiches. That's close enough to $A40. s***! I cursed a bit, but eventually got over it and we decided that we'd head to the other town on the island, Anacapri, and check that out first. The bus ride only took about 10 minutes and took us over a great big mountain with lots of hairpin turns, but the view over Capri and the ocean was beautiful. We jumped out and walked all the main streets of Anacapri in about an hour. We decided to take a chairlift right up to the highest peak on the island. After 12 minutes of me fearing for my life we'd reached the top and the 8Euro ticket was definitely worth it. The view was indescribable. We could see the whole island and just blue Mediterranean surrounding it. We had some lunch in a little restaurant in Anacapri (I had a delicious gnocci!) and then jumped on the bus back down to Capri.

We spent an hour or so just walking through the shopping streets of Capri. I'd found a watch that I liked and was going to go and maybe buy it. That was until I'd found out the price of it - 300 Euros. I left broken-hearted.We looked in all the windows of the high priced fashion shops, which seem to be in every single town we visit. We had just about run out of time, so we jumped back on the bus down to the Marina. The day had turned out to be quite nice, and I'd decided that I wanted to go for a swim, but the beach was incredibly crowded and we only had 15 minutes until we had to be back on the boat, so I gave it a miss and took some nice photos instead. The clear, blue-green water was so inviting though.

Back on the boat and we circled around the other side of the island. We passed under rock arches and looked at all the beautiful cliffs that surround the island. We also saw the 'white grotto' with magnificent white stalagmites (I think that's the right word!) hanging down from inside the cave. After an hour we were back at the start and made the 30-minute journey back to the mainland.

We ventured back up to the cabin and rested for a bit, before having another dinner at the camping restaurant. Another torrential downpour started while we were eating, and the roof of the restaurant started to leak badly. We had to run all the way back to the cabin in the rain, but still got completely soaked through in the meantime. We spent the rest of our last night just watching TV and reading.

I will fill you in on the boat ride and the rest when we reach (hopefully) sunny Taormina, on the south coast of Sicily (at the base of Mt Etna, lets hope she doesn't blow!).

Big thanks to Cheryl for the footy results, and I hope my Saints crush the Cats on Saturday (Results again please Cheryl?? - we did manage to find that Ablett got the Brownlow!)…. Oh when the Saints, go marching in…….