So we've taken a couple of weeks to wind our way from the South of Italy heading north and east until we've reached Sorrento. The weather's been lovely (warm and sunny) and there has been some fantastic scenery, so it all sounds great and some bits have been...but then you have to consider the Italian love for loud music at all hours, Italian roads and drivers and well...just Italians...lots of them. Well it is August after all and Italy (all of it) goes on holiday in August. All this means that we've had an interesting couple of weeks experiencing the "s***sofrenic" (not mis-spelled but a new word) Italian psyche in all it's glory. This means lots of ups and downs (a bit like the Italian roads).

We did have a lovely drive through Puglia (which was nowhere near as bleak as we'd been led to believe by the guide books), finally ending up on the East coast in a place called Maratea. The coastline here is beautiful with blue sea, little fishing harbours and small rocky bays. However, it also has its share of "resorts" and we ended up in one in the aptly named Pria DenightMare on a big site with hundreds of Italian holiday makers who seemed to think it was great ! Cramped pitches, loud music, crap toilets and a railway line running through the middle with express trains passing every 10 minutes or so.

Still we did manage to fit in a great walk up to the Jesus statue that sits high in the hills above Maratea. The walk started in sunshine and by the time we reached the top we were in the middle of a large grey (and wet) cloud?so we concluded that even the weathers "s***sofrenic".

After we'd exhausted Maratea and it had exhausted us, we continued further up the coast and failed to heed Margaret's warnings about Sorrento being too busy and full of mental drivers and ended up there. Still everything seemed great when we arrived we had a pitch overlooking the bay with views of Sorrento itself and Mount Vesuvius and a book of walks that would take us away from the hustle and bustle to secluded beaches. What we also had was loud music from the site "animation" team, kicking off at around 10 in the morning and running through til the wee small hours and roads to get to the walks with our scooter that operate with different rules to the ones we're used to. Most alarmingly they have the "give way to overtaking traffic" rule (this is true), whereby anyone that hoots and pulls out has right of way.

Still we made it to our walk with M gamely clinging on as we weaved our way through the traffic "Italian Job" style and then wandered through some lovely olive groves to a "quiet secluded" bay for swimming. Well it was until we arrived, they waited just until M thought we were safe and then out of nowhere a man with microphone and ghetto blaster materialises and kicks of a water melon eating competition that everyone was encouraged to participate in. M declined the opportunity !!!

The same extremes held true when we decided to venture out for a meal in town. Started off well with a couple of drinks in a wine bar serving some great Italian vintages and then plummeted when we ventured next door for food. The service was truly "s***sofrenic", with the wrong wine being delivered (a cheap bottle of plonk instead of what was ordered) and then all the right dishes arriving although not necessarily in the right order. Having sent back a "secondi" for the second time and M having had all her courses delivered simultaneously we decided to call it a day and head home (hungry in my case) but not before I got to be all "s***sofrenic" myself and throw a wobbly over the bill which included all the stuff we didn't eat ! Victory to me with a >50% reduction demanded and received.

So we move on. We're going inland now in search of the "real" Italy with the mountains of Abruzzo and the hills of Umbria to come.