Next Stop....Sorrento!

July 12, 2014

Saturday morning we woke up, ready for a new adventure.  Rome was the most perfect 4 days of our lives, and we were ready to see what Sorrento held for us.  We took the subway to the train station, and then boarded the train to Naples.  Although it was a smooth ride, I still got a bit nauseous.  I found out on this trip I have about zero tolerance for moving other than walking on my own two feet.  Nauseous scale of 1-10....about a 3.  It was great to see the Italian countryside fly by us as we headed south.

The inside of our train car

Our train took us to the Naples where we had to get on another train to take us to Sorrento.  First train....nice, smooth, air conditioned.  Second train....rickety, scary and hot (naseous scale: 5).  The Naples train station and the train ride through Naples was actually the first time since being in Italy I feared for my life.  Sketchy people, mixed with bad areas of town, and a language I didn't understand very well just wasn't a good mix.  Sorrento was the last stop on the route, so we spent about an hour on the sketchy train.  Thankfully the farther we got away from the Naples station, the better the surrounding areas were getting.

The town of Sorrento is small and we were able to walk to the bus stop where our hotel would pick us up.  The short-bus driver, Mario as we nicknamed him, was a happy little guy and knew only a handful of English words. 

Mario

The 10 minute winding bus ride up the hill (nauseous scale: 8) took us to Il Nido Hotel, which was a small but nice family-ran hotel.  We got to our room and I couldn't stop taking pictures from our balcony.  The view was just amazing.

The town of Sorrento

 Across the bay, Mount Vesuvius

Closeup of Sorrento

We headed back to town (yay, the bus again) and wandered around taking in the sights.  The streets were filling up quickly with people, and it seemed that Sorrento is busier after the sun goes down.  What they all do, I don't know, unless it's shopping.

All the streets are lined with shop after shop of touristy things, and most of them had to do with lemons.  Sorrento is known for their lemon orchards, and also have them growing everywhere, like Maple trees in Indiana.  After we grabbed some dinner, we found the church we would be going to tomorrow, and then headed back to the hotel for the night.