"And Now For Something Completely Different" -- Italy in Three Parts - Part One: The Amalfi Coast

As this whole trip abroad began with the idea of a ya-ya (i.e., girlfriends) 60th birthday celebration in Italy, Len and I decided to build in some more exploration time of this country we had fallen in love with a few years ago. We planned to spend the nine days before my friends Deb and Caroline were to meet me, in two areas we had always wanted to visit--the Amalfi coast and the Cinque Terre.

Main gate Pompeii

The Amalfi coast, a peninsula on the south-western coast , is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its cultural landscape and (unfortunately) is a top tourist destination in Italy. We hoped to avoid the tourist hordes by splitting our time between Sorrento, Capri and Amalfi town rather than base ourselves in one place and do day trips. The best time to enjoy what the Amalfi coast has to offer is in the evening when the masses of tourists are gone.

Our first two-night stay was in Sorrento, on the northern part of the peninsula. We took a fast train from Rome to Naples, then spent a few hours in Pompeii, before arriving at the coast. Pompeii is certainly on the tourist trail and we had to dodge many a tour group during our exploration. But this outdoor museum, a World Heritage historical site, was a "must see" on our agenda (and, of course, there is a movie just released…;). It is considered an excellent example of a Roman settlement, with many items…and people..preserved in detail.

Pompeii victim...it speaks for itself

We used our Rick Steves guide to wander along a route that covered the highlights of the site, including Roman architecture and clever infrastructure, intricate mosaics, furniture, utensils and, of course, the moulds of a few of the 3,000 unfortunate people who didn't make it out in time. The amphitheatres (3 of them), baths and private villas were all amazing, but the site that had the longest line-up of tourists waiting to enter? The brothel, with its suggestive paintings! Some things never change!

Narrow streets in Sorrento, Italy. A great restaurant, Chantecleer, is on the left

Sorrento, our home for two nights, is a delightful town. It has a main square ringed by restaurants and many narrow cobblestoned side streets filled with clothing and souvenir shops to explore.

But our favourite places in our wanderings were off the tourist path. We discovered a small cove at the end of a steep curvy staircase with a few quiet restaurants that featured the fresh fish of the day. We also came across a large accessible grove of lemon trees right in the middle of the town. As we enjoyed a beer on the beach watching the fishing boats bobbing in the water and later walked down the long path between trees heavy with extremely large lemons and the odd orange to the small retail area to buy a bottle of the famous limoncello (yummy lemon liqueur), we almost forgot we were in a town of 17,000. Part One to be continued...

Mmmmm