At the Car Wash with the Windows Down in Sorrento, and Crazy Ride to the Amalfi Coast

We awoke this morning to find yet another day of wetness and gloom upon us, but the seas are calmer than at any time in the last 3 days and the boats are now running.  We check the schedule and Alilaura Boat Lines has One Hydrofoil going to Sorrento from Ischia (just started up their service for the season last week) today at 5:25 pm. This is great news because otherwise we would have to take the boat back to Naples, catch a bus up to the Naples Train Station, and then take the train to Sorrento.  We get online at our hotel in Ischia and book a hotel in Sorrento in about 5 minutes. We check out, do some last minute shopping in Ischia, and then catch the Hydrofoil  for our ride to Sorrento.

I said the seas were calmer, however, in the channel as we jet along, there is an 8 foot swell along the way. The water is 8 feet below us and then the water rises level with the windows on our deck and we bob and roll between the swells all the way over. Terri thinks this is fun because she grew up on a boat, Jim, however, is really focusing hard on the land in the distance, so as  not "toss his cookies" from sea sickness.  We both survive with our lunches in the proper places. The water in the bay is incredibly clear down to maybe 35 feet, clear enough to see the anchor at the bottom of the chain on the boat. We arrive in Sorrento and it, like many other towns next to the  Amalfi Coast is built on the cliffs above the harbor. We pay our 1 euro to take a bus up the hill to the town and unbelievably, the first stop in Piazza Tasso is our Hotel, the Antiche Mura. Boy did we luck out. This is one of the best hotels we have stayed in our whole trip. The place is completely full and we get one of the last rooms, in the garden area . This place is built next to a huge ravine that used to be a fort built in the 1500's and has one of the original towers of Sorrento on the property that was used to defend the city, complete with a cannon at the top. First class joint with an included breakfast, with, oh my, real hot eggs in the morning!  Breakfast in Italy has been very alien to us. It has consisted at every hotel we have stayed at, of: Expresso coffee, yogurt, canned fruit, croissants, cold Parma Ham, Salami, some cheeses, and hard boiled eggs. So at this point of our trip we are very happy to see cooked eggs, a huge selection of pastries, fresh fruit, and bigger coffees that take longer than 2 gulps and you are done. It has been thundering and lightning all night long, and the rain, she keeps a coming down. We manage to do some shopping and attend a local folk dance, songfest at the Teatro Tasso. Very campy, couldn't understand much, but a lot of fun with sing alongs, skits and such. Sorrento has the same type of Old Town as Nice and the Trastavere area of Rome has, that is, very narrow streets with a lot of shops, restaurants, and cafes scattered throughout. A very nice town and I hear that it has really nice views, of the coast and water,  if we could only see it through the clouds, fog and relentless rain. We get up in the morning and decide that the rain will not defeat us, so we are going to take the bus to the Amalfi Coast. We are off to the train station 2 blocks from our hotel in a sputtering rain and now we are on the bus, off up out of the city to the other side of the coast. The Amalfi Coast officially starts on the other side of the mountain from Sorrento and runs a little over 30 miles through the larger towns of Positano, Amalfi, and finally ends in Salerno. This is some of the most beautiful views of a coast we have ever seen and most of the towns are built right into the cliffs and rocks above the water's edge. The view is wonderful with photo opportunities at every turn, however the bus ride, is an adventure in itself. This is like a ride at Disneyland where they built the road too small for the vehicles traveling on them.

 We are hurling down the road in a bus that is around 35 to 40 feet long and driving on roads originally built in the 1800's for horse and wagons. As a consequence we are traveling at 35 miles an hour, and then down to 10 as we negotiate a ninety degree turn. A few honks of the horn to warn oncoming traffic and we speed up and then slow down for the entire ride. Periodically there is race between our bus driver and oncoming traffic to see who will make it to the turn first. There are also the stubborn drivers on the other side of the road that will not yield to our sled on wheels, and so we have to stop and let them go first before we can proceed. This tortuous process is made worse by the fact that at every turn there is another photo opportunity. Reviewing our pictures from that ride I see many of them wind up being photos of air, mountains, and the inside of our chariot. We rode the bus to Amalfi and got off to shop and have lunch. I have to say that we have only had one "bad" meal on the entire trip and the one in Amalfi was a very good one. The rain is still coming down, off and on, so it is difficult to really appreciate this beautiful location. We head back to Sorrento for one last night, and tomorrow we journey to Naples and then onto Rome for our last night in Italy.
Got up this morning, had the wonderful breakfast and checked out of the room. Onto the Circumvesuvius train to Naples, transfer onto the TrenItalia for the trip to Rome which is uneventful.  We arrive in Rome's Termini Station and check into our last hotel. I would like to say that we saved the best for last, but that would be a bold faced lie! We decided that we should stay close to the Train terminal so we could catch the first train to Fiumacino airport in the morning. In this regard Rome is like Los Angeles, in that the area is not the greatest and in Los Angeles I am afraid, the Hotel Viennese would be one that might be rented out by the hour and not the day.  Room was clean but the bed was a real double bed for 2 larger Americans. As an aside, during the entire trip we have been staying in Hotels advertising double beds only to find that they are usually 2 single beds shoved together. This is also the smallest room we have stayed in our entire trip. Room for the bed and little else along with a small bathroom. Last night in Italy, stop complaining, so we drop our bags and take off for one last tour of Rome. Other than a few Metro Rides, and a couple of  bus rides, we have walked all over Rome. You see so much more walking than sitting on a bus. Took in the Trevi Fountain, the Piazza Navona, a few more churches, a museum and had dinner and then back to the hotel. Up at 5:00 Am and onto the Leonardo Express train to the airport to start the journey home.

A word about recommendations from the airlines. Our carrier, Delta, suggested that we allow 3 hours before our departure time, to be processed through passport control, and baggage drop off, etc. We held up our part of the bargain and arrived at the processing terminal 2 3/4 hours before our departure only to find that we and 50 other people are the only ones in the building. 30 minutes later, the employees show up to start their day. Let us just say that it was a very long day with us missing our 2nd flight because of late luggage delivery and customs processing in Atlanta. We ran for a plane clear across the airport to get on a standby flight into LAX. We arrive around 8pm but alas our luggage took the road less traveled and are in Burbank. Oh well, I am home, they can take as long as they wish to get our bags to us.

Home at around 10 Pm and straight into bed.

We really enjoyed our time out of the country but it was real nice falling into our own beds after 28 days away.

Last thoughts. Even though we were gone almost a month, there is still so much that we missed throughout our journey. There is just so much to see, hear, feel, and experience, that we would probably reduce the number of cities that we visit next time. 3 or 4 days in one location seems to work really well for us. Staying 7 or 8 days in Rome turned out to be the right amount of time in that history rich city to see all of the "biggie" attractions. Our plan to decompress and relax in Ischia and Sorrento was a good one, however the weather didn't cooperate with us to fully take advantage of the laid back atmosphere we craved at the end of our trip.

Our trip to the Val D Aoste area of Northern Italy and Chamonix, France was incredible and made us want to return for a ski only trip though Italy, France and Switzerland, sometime in the future.

We made this blog for 3 reasons, number one was to share our experiences with everyone. Number two was to let our kids know that we were okay, and the real reason we wrote the Blog was to REMEMBER WHAT THE HELL WE DID IN ITALY FOR 28 DAYS IN 2012!

When we are older and grayer, we will still have this memory on paper of where we went, and what we did on our trip to Italy.

Thanks for checking in us from time to time and so we are signing off one last time

Ciao, Ciao from Jim and Terri
April 21, 2012

Finally at home and I am posting from a computer instead of the Ipad so I can add some pictures to spice things up in the coming days.