Italy, beautiful and relaxing...

Hi all

Well Kearie and I have had the most wonderful adventures, sadly this is our last day together, tomorrow I will fly to England and Kearie will fly to Milan, to stay with friends. I fly home to Australia on Thursday morning and arrive in Melbourne on Friday night. It has been an awesome adventure and I loved sharing it with my beautiful daughter. Lots of wonderful memories, to keep.

We have really enjoyed having 4 days in the one spot, that is like a dream. Sorrento is beautiful, really pretty and the locals are very friendly and laid back. The beaches are nonexistent though. When we first arrived we decided to walk down to the beach, near our hotel. It was a 20 minute walk down and about a 30 minute walk back up.... I had to stop and rest on the way back up. We found the water okay, but it is almost impossible to get to, unless you are part mountain goat... There are no sandy beaches, well there is one, right in town and about 100 meters long. The rest is just rock, with a fairly steep drop to the water, mostly about 5 feet or more, up to 10 meters or more in some places.. The locals actually lay on the rocks and sunbake, pretty uncomfortable and no shade to speak of. Very pretty scenery though. We haven’t ventured back to the beach since. Kearie may go this afternoon, but I am not having any of it, a long mountain trek for scenery I can see from here. I think she may be going to brave it and swim. I will try the hotel pool, much more my style.


Sorrento, the water is not very accessable, but wonderful views...


More beautiful views


We spent one day in Sorrento, just lazing about and shopping. It is really lovely and we both really like it. We came back to the hotel and then realising we needed cash for the next day, and our day trip, we went back into Sorrento for dinner. Well that was a mistake. The food was okay, but as we were nearing the end of our meal, we looked up and this religious procession was passing the restaurant, a really long one. With all the catholic paraphernalia and incense and a huge Mother Mary, being carried by 4 really exhausted, perspiring men. Apparently they have a religious ceremony here once a year and once again I landed in the middle of it. Just like Munich and Avignon, when something only happens once a year, I somehow find it. Normally that is awesome and this would have been too, except we didn’t want to go and the buses stopped running for the duration..... No one told us that.... So I finally tracked down a policeman and asked him what the go was. The buses would run again in an hour he tells me. Okay, then we see a sign that the buses would not run until after 12 midnight, and as our last bus is at 11 something, we are in trouble. We finally decide we have to hoof it back to the hotel, it is maybe 3 to 4 kilometres, uphill, no other choice really. The walking was fine, but the fact that you have to walk on the road, with all those Italian drivers is the scary part. I was terrified the entire time. The road is very narrow and these people pass each other with incredible speed and it all looks very treacherous. Though I haven’t seen any accidents, so they are apparently pretty good at it (although the dents on the local cars show they don’t always get off scott free). I was hugging the stone wall and praying the entire time we were walking. My handbag is all scuffed and ruined due to my effort, but we did arrive in one piece. Kearie was not at all concerned, but then she has been to Italy a lot more times than me, and has driven with the locals in Milan.. I tell you the experience took years off my life!!


The place is all up and down, really hard on the legs, but pretty as a picture


The view fron the hotel roof, this morning. That is mount Versuvius on the left...


Yesterday we did our day trip to Capri... What a beautiful island. We both loved it. Our guide was half Swiss and half Italian and he learned to speak English in Australia, so of course he was wonderful at it... although with all his accents he sounded more Kiwi or South African to me. He was really nice and quite cute to look at. He showed us the part of Capri that no t many people go to and it is beautiful. We did not do the blue grotto, as he suggested against it, it takes about one and a half hours to line up for it and about 1 minute to see it, and you miss all the other stuff. 4 ladies decided to do it anyway and later told us that once they got there the Grotto was closed due to the high tide, so we are glad we did not bother. The Island is picturesque and really friendly
hotel and returned us there as well, no effort at all on our part. We did see a small part of the Amalfi coast, everyone loves it, but I must have seen the shit part, cause I wasn’t impressed at all, it was just all rocky and cliffs. Like the rest of the place, I like sandy beaches and places that are easy to access. I am probably missing something, but I don’t know that I care to be honest.


Capri, from the boat on the way there..


Capri


View from Anacapri


What a beautiful place....


Today we are going to Pompeii, that is if Kearie ever wakes up.... I am sitting outside, on the terrace and it is really beautiful, no hot sun or humidity yet. So a really nice time of day.


I will try to blog again before I leave, it is not always easy, as a lot of hotels do not have wifi everywhere, this one only has it in the lounge, so I will post this later.
Cheers for now
Lones