Una giornata a Napoli e Sorrento!

Thursday in Napoli!

Ok, everyone is tired of my song by now, but here we are in Naples. We arrived early and Jan, Judy, Scott, John and Sue headed to Pompei and Mt Vesuvius. Dan, Janet, Bill, Linda, Ron and I headed for Sorrento. Pete basked in the quiet of an empty ship and a hot tub. Not a bad idea after 14 days of non stop sight seeing and walking. Sorrento was such a great little town! We took the hydrofoil there, about a 40 minute ride. Coming in from the water was amazing because, like Santorini, it is built on a cliff. The main part of the city is flat but it juts right out into the sea. As you approach from the water, the cliff goes straight up and then the buildings look like they are the top part of the cliff. You don’t want to fall off the balcony there! Then as you walk through town, you come to a little bridge and it drops off into a canyon a couple hundred feet down. In Sorrento, there is a little, famous wood inlay factory. The men, Dan, Bill and Ron, really wanted to see it. The work they do there is amazing, so beautiful. They had a showroom with tea trays, music boxes, pictures for the wall, coffee tables, games tables, many things all beautifully hand made. It is called Notturno. I think they made Pinnochio there. It was fascinating as we toured the factory, just the 6 of us and one other couple. They explained the process in making the inlay and how it is an art form that not many are doing anymore because cheap copies can be done with a laser and put on particle board. These are much less expensive, but don’t last and aren’t as nice as the true hand inlay. It was fun to get a few little things to take home.

Next in Sorrento we went, ok, everybody together now, SHOPPING! I don’t know how we could have shopped so much and bought so little, but it is fun to look at the shops and just browse. We found a really great pizzeria called Aurora. We sat under the umbrellas, had beer and wine and pizza in the birthplace of pizza. Ok, it was invented in Naples, but we were close. We also had a traditional dessert called Sophia Loren. Not telling why it is called that, you’ll have to come to Sorrento yourself to find out. We walked back to the port to catch the hydrofoil. We took a bus into town. It wasn’t far, but up a steep hill. The walk down was easy and beautiful. We had many steps into the crevasse, but then we followed the winding road that the bus took. This road was tiny and with hairpin curves. The small busses had to stop to let cars pass and could barely negotiate the turns. If a bus was coming while you were walking down, you had to hug the rock wall on either side to not get hit. There were plants growing from niches in the wall and everything was beautiful. It had rained in the morning before we arrived, so the streets were wet early in the day, but we were blessed with warm, sunny skies.

On the way to Sorrento, we saw Mt Vesuvius, or at least most of it. The top was covered in a cloud every time we saw it and we were worried that the rest of our group would hike all the way up there and see nothing. Instead, they went to Pompei and saw that. They said it was a great place to see, many ruins, but different from anything else we had seen earlier. Both groups had great experiences, just different. We saw each other back on the ship. We are all a little bushed from all this traveling, but so happy that we have had this chance to be together and see a new part of the world. Another blessing.

We had a sail away party on the back of the boat and watched Naples fade into the distance. Judy took photos of the lighthouses and shed a few tears. Her favorite part is sailing away! We’ve had such a trip, none of us is ready to leave, but I think we are all ready to talk to our kids and families and rest from our vacation! Our last dinner together was very nice, then we all packed our clothes for our last day in Rome.