Sun 10th – Wed 13th May
Accommodation: Eden House.
Mon 11th May
It was another early start for us today as we had to meet down at Marina Piccolo at 7:40 am for our Full-Day Capri, Anacapri and Blue Grotto tour. Our guide for the day was a young, friendly lady, Francesca, who had spent a lot of her youth on the island.
We had been to Capri back in 2007 with Tom and Annabelle and ended up revisiting most of the places we had seen back then with them so it was kind of a bittersweet day; nice to be able to be back here but missing our family at the same time. Our time on the island was divided into three sections: the first spent at Capri where we had a fair bit of free time and two coffees that set us back €20! The second partwas spent at Anacapri, where we rode the chairlift and also had lunch and also had a fair bit of free time, and the third was spent taking a boat trip around the island. Unfortunately, the seas were a bit too rough to take a small vessel and to explore the blue grotto.
It was a pleasant day out, especially as the morning cloud cleared and we had lovely sunshine for most of the day, but we would have liked a bit more historical information about the island; its geology / formation and the different periods of settlement on the island. I had thought that this small-group tour may have offered such information but it turned out not to be the case. The tour cost almost $600 AUD for the two of us so Capri is definitely an expensive day out and I’m not sure it’s worth the while. Having said that, to do the island under your own steam is costly as well so it is just really one big tourist trap, albeit an exceptionally beautiful tourist trap and worth visiting at least once!
It was 4 pm by the time we arrived back at Marina Piccolo in Sorrento and we stopped off to buy some supplies for dinner as we had another night of dining in. We’d been so lucky with the weather as it was another glorious afternoon and, then, sunset that we enjoyed whilst we dined.
Tue 12th May
It was our last full day in Sorrento and we spent it by taking a day trip up to Naples. We had a walking tour booked for 10:45 am and that meant catching the 8:14 am train from Sorrento for the one hour journey to Naples.
Our 2 hour walking tour was with a young lady and new mum, Claudia. She explained she was functioning on little sleep due to a newborn and that may have partly contributed to her slightly manic delivery. She was absolutely delightful and with a huge personality and keen sense of humour that made the tour so much more enjoyable.
She started by pointing out something we had noticed in our short time in Naples prior to the tour starting. Claudine described is best as a pity of contradiction: it’s dirty, noisy and hectic but also a wonderful place with a deep history, wonderful museums, loads of churches and great food. contradiction. At one point there were 500 churches just in the old town area of Naples but many have been converted into museums and so now there are only 220!
Claudine gave our group of 20 lots of information and point I found interesting was that there are 21 dialects in Italy and they’re all quite different. Such that Italians in one area will not be able to understand Italians in another area if they are speaking in their native dialect. It was a great way to spend the first few hours we had in this city and is a tour is highly recommended.
It was unfortunate for us that Tuesday has become the new Monday in many cities with museums being closed. The main museum in Naples is the archaeological museum and was one of the reasons we visited the city only to find that it wasn’t open today. We were both rather surprised and then very disappointed.
We tried to make a visit to an underground museum that had a still functioning Greek civilisation cistern, but the English speaking tour wasn’t for some hours away and so that foiled that plan.
So after having a bite to eat, we explored a bit further and visited one of the other underground museums that Claudia had pointed out to us. The 13th century Church of San Lorenzo was bombed during World War II and, whilst they were carrying out restorations on the site, they discovered the remains of a Roman city below ground and even traces of an ancient Greek civilisation below that. We spent about an hour exploring this archaeological site before heading to the train station to catch the 4 pm train back to Sorrento.
We both wished we could have had another day to explore Naples in a bit more depth so bear that in mind if you’re ever in the area; the city needs a minimum of 2 full days to do it any sort of justice. It was after 5 pm before we arrived back at the apartment and we had some sorting to do to organize our luggage for Matera. We head there tomorrow and will be leaving our car and most of our luggage, Dagwood included, at a parking garage outside the city and just taking carry-on style luggage into the city for our 3 night stay. Once our luggage was sorted it was another home cooked meal whilst soaking up the glorious weather and view from our balcony.
We loved our time in Sorrento and it was made all the more special due to our wonderful accommodation. We would highly recommend this apartment for anyone thinking about a trip to Sorrento. You can also find ‘Eden House’ on Boiking.com. Be careful not to select ‘Eden Suite’ though; as this is a studio apartment next door to Eden House.
