Day 25

Sorrento

Finally, we arrived in Italy.

Now all we had to do was get from Bari to Sorrento so we hopped on a bus from the port to the train station and I found out the next train to Naples wasn't until 4pm. It was 11:30am at this point. So we did what any other sane person would do. Found the nearest McDonalds and vastly outstayed our welcome.

When we were there I experienced that the toilets were only slightly better than the holes in the floor in Istanbul although at least flushing toilet paper was an accepted part of culture here.

The train was long, arduous and boribg but we eventually got to Naples for about 10pm and following a sprint through the station with our bags, wr got the last metro towards Sorrento.

The place we were staying was another Rach had booked on Airbnb and was about half an hour out of actual Sorrento, in a place called Piopainno. We met one of the family at the train station and he gave us a lift to their house.

When we got their everyone was awake to greet us and afterwards we headed straight to bed.

Day 26

On our first full day we went to Pompeii to see the excavation site near Mount Vesuvius.

It was different to how I'd imagined it but I'm unsure whether it was positively or negatively different.

Firstly, the whole place is huge and you could definitely spend all day there, but equally a lot of it does start to look the same after a few hours.

Obviously the story behind the town is really interesting and I thought that we'd have been given a bit more freedom to walk around and explore, but we found there were loads of parts blocked off without explanation and there were very few of the infamous plaster cast bodies of people who had been there.

Another gripe was that a lot of the town had been obviously rebuilt or modified with red brick and I felt it took away a bit from the ancient feel. That said though, it was interesting and I'm glad we experienced it.

Also, we were able to walk into the amphitheatre and I got to pretend to be Russell Crowe for about 2 or 3 minutes.

We headed back to the train station at around 7 and went into Sorrento for a look around and a couple of beers by the port.

Needless to say, as soon as we arrived it was obvious why it is so popular. It was so stereotypically Italian it hurt and so picturesque it was hard to take a bad picture, especially as the sun was setting beneath the horizon.

What we didn't realise was the last train back to Piopainno was at half 9. Cue a mad dash through the middle of Sorrento, shouting at tourists who couldn't grasp that we had to urgently get through. Diplomacy definitely wasn't top of the agenda.

We managed to make it and on our arrival back, the family hosting us went out and picked up a pizza for us.

This pizza was incredible. It was huge, square and had 3 different flavours in seperate parts.

To accompany said pizza, Rach asked for some red wine. A couple of moments later a bottle appeared on the table and we were told the family had made it themselves. It was fizzy. Fizzy red wine. It shouldn't have been fizzy, should it? This was enough to convince me to turn in before they whacked their soda stream out on anything else.

Day 27

We got up ridiculously early today so we had time to get the train to Sorrento and get the early boat over to Capri.

Once we'd got to the booking office it became apparent that today was not going to be cheap, 70 euros for 2 return tickets.

The boat took 20 minutes and it was a there was a ton of stunning scenery, helped by the blazing sunshine.

Once we arrived we realised we'd need some cash and found out the only cash machine on the island was right at the top of a cable car railway. On the journey up we passed loads of houses accompanied by lemon trees, the only way I can describe it was simply quintessentially Italian.

Once making our way down, we paid for a 2 hour boat tour of the island which was stunning. The boat went through the white and green grottoes, natural caves formed over hundreds of years by the waves.

We also went to the blue grotto, the hugely popular one which has a small opening into a huge cave. The sunlight poking through the small opening lights up the water a light blue which is amazing.

A shame then that seconds before Rach and I went in disaster struck.

We had both negotiated getting into the rickety small rowing boat which takes you into the cave. As the ace was so scenic I decided to take a few pictures. Just as this was happening, another rowing boat smashed into us and the camera fell out of my hands and plopped to the bottom of the sea. My response wasn't the most eloquent or composed, just ask Rach.

Following this, I felt I needed consoling and on our return to Sorrento we had a meal at a busy restaurant down one of the many winding sidestreets.

The food was a bit average but we got a sharing starter which had literally everything from octopus to proscuitto and olives, it was really good.

We ended our evening back at the house with a 6 euro bottle of wine having an alcohol induced conversation with our hosts via google translate.

Day 28

Today we had to leave and get the train to Rome.

We got a lift to the station and caught the metro back to Naples where we had an hoir to get a bite to eat.

Our train was one of Italy's high speed trains only took an hour to get to Rome, meaning we had loads of time to get to our next place which was handy.