A series of articles chronicling a hotel-based holiday in Sorrento, Italy in 2005. We had taken my mother with us which made steep hills (and wishing wells...) more of a challenge but a good time was had by all.
Each article can be accessed by clicking or tapping the appropriate photograph and link below. A link at the end of each article will return you to this index page, or simply use the [BACK] key.
Wednesday 24 August 2005. It's our last night in Sorrento.
Night time in the market streets of Sorrento. Whilst colourful by day, at night they have a special atmosphere! It's a place to see and be seen.
Whilst most holiday makers are dressed casually, occasionally a couple, a group of girls or an Italian housewife will stroll by, dressed to impress.
There were a large number of folk with rather familiar accents too - snapping up tiny bottles of Limoncella lemon liqueur, saying "Eeh, George, let's take some o' this back for our Florrie!"
In fact we've still got a couple of said small bottles gathering dust on the shelf, contents separating and looking not quite as appealing as it did when we bought it that night...
Eventually even the ladies had had enough of the markets and shops. We started to head back towards the hotel, past this little park which looked completely different to how it appears during the day.
The hotel next door had a DJ playing loud music until the early hours. The DJ was indistinguishable from an English DJ actually. "Verberve buh vebberrev, ha ha ha! Beverber ha ha! beebussy cooooobah! Hey ho! Ha ha ha!" Yep... just like any DJ in England at weddings, in pubs, clubs, etc...
The next day we have a few hours before the coach picks us up to take us to the airport. The ladies make back straight for the market streets, so I have a wander inland and find I'm walking over a bridge across an immensely steep and deep chasm.
At the bottom are the ruins of a large factory and to take the photo I'm shooting almost vertically down from the roadway bridge. A quite awesome viewpoint.
Further inland I find some of the old city walls. I hadn't even known that Sorrento had a city wall until I wandered up this far and passed under the gate in the photo.
They are fairly solid chunks of masonry though as you can see. And these lengths of wall that I saw are so complete and seemingly in such good condition that I had to conclude that the rest of the city wall was deliberately demolished, probably to allow the town to expand.
I couldn't really work out what the three corner corbels would have supported... The wall above them is unbroken so they are hardly likely to have held a fighting platform - which would have been more use on the inside of the wall anyway. Perhaps they had some extremely large hanging baskets?
Then as the heat grows, I head back towards the market and harbour and find somewhere cool to wait for Fran and Mum. The little open space here looks like they have set up for an open air concert of some kind for tonight. Typical - the day we go home! Ah well...
Ahhh.... yes, that'll do! And that's about it. Now we are whisked off to Naples airport where my battered hat gets stuck in the X-ray conveyor to be eventually thrown out to a bemused person who couldn't remember putting it in... I forgot all about it until I was on the plane when I suddenly said "Where's my hat?" but it was far too late! And probably far too battered to make me care all that much!
And by way of coincidence, as I finish writing about our Sorrrento holiday, my mate Clive is about to set off on his Sorrento holiday, so have a good one, bud!
Wednesday 24 August 2005. After we left Amalfi the coach took us up into the hills and we stopped for lunch.
This turned out to be pasta, which I don't really like, but needs must - yeuch! An then on to Ravello.
The village is gorgeous, but we have come here in particular to visit Villa Rufolo, famous for both its gardens and as a venue for open air performances.
I didn't pay much attention to the chap crossing in front of me at the time but can lay people's minds to rest by reporting that he was whistling and not reacting to a bee sting...
This corner was laid out with chairs ready for a performance. Whatever it was, it wasn't to happen during our visit!
The venue hosts performances from opera to Elton John. This is the main stage, erected on scaffolding on the very edge of the cliff face.
Elton John wasn't there at the time we visited though, so I took advantage of an empty stage to stand on it myself and give a short but extremely worthy aria... or something...
The stage actually overhangs the cliff and couldn't be in a more spectacular setting. Wagner wrote part of his Parsifal here.
The gardens were a riot of colour whilst we were there. My Grandad would have loved it. His greenhouse was always a riot of colour and that heady smell of plant growth and compost when I was a kid. Apparently when I was a baby I found the paint brush he had been painting his greenhouse frame with - this being in the days of wooden-framed greenhouses. Apparently soap and water had to be deployed to get the green paint out of my mouth... Somewhat thankfully I don't remember this myself...
The view over the cliffs. This is one of the most common postcard views of Ravello.
This is another. Google for Ravello images and you will see these twin towers again and again.
Villa Rufolo originated in the 13th century as a convent. There is still plenty of evidence of that time of quiet religious contemplation, but try as I might I could find nun of the original inhabitants...
Never-the-less, these quiet remains of a previous way of life gave the place an alternative character and the cool of the vaulted room was welcome after the heat and glare of the sunshine outside.
It was time to leave Villa Ruffolo, so we came out to the pleasant square we saw earlier, where this shop quickly got the attention of the ladies.
Wednesday 24 August 2005 and we're back to the Sorrento-based holiday. You may remember that we have brought Mum along to Italy and we are currently in Amalfi where the rest of the excursionists are gathering in little groups, waiting to get on a boat for a trip up the Amalfi coast.
Whilst we waited I started to sketch the hillside with a small monastery at the top of the hill and a cluster of churches and hotels at the bottom. The boat arrived and I had to finish it later.
No genial Gino as a guide on this one, our guide was so memorable I've totally forgotten whether it was a he or a she! But whichever - they were rubbish!
Not so the scenery though, which was absolutely stunning. Taking Amalfi as it's central point the boat took us up the coast in one way and returned to go past Amalfi and down the coast for a while before returning again. We did see quite a lot of Amalfi, but from the sea it looked as stunning as it did from its streets, so no one minded really,
I seem to remember various houses being pointed out - I can't remember the roll call of famous names that we were told had villas or mansions along the coast. Gina Lollobrigida, Roger Moore, and Microsoft's Bill Gates all had houses along here. In fact, I'm sure I remember that Bill Gates had actually bought a nunnery or monastery as a house. I'm not sure I'd want a holiday home full of nuns, but there you go... I'm sure there were others. These houses were empty for most of the year. I don't particularly agree with having loads of houses around the world. Apart from the waste of space, it does nothing for local shopkeepers either.
Ah yes... the hat... It was becoming more and more floppy. The initial chic broad flop of the front of the brim was now a bit of a side droop!
As we came back past Amalfi and started sailing onwards we started to see caves, both down on the waterline and high on the hillside.
This one's a bit of a sockeroonie! Space for a whole family of troglodytes and a side room for the pet cave troll!
The coast road - the Amalfi Drive - is world renowned for its beauty. As demonstrated by this natural arch of rock, on which is sitting a group of teenagers whilst below you can just make out the head of the one they pushed off... It's hard, when looking at such a perfect landscape, to imagine these beaches with the charming and picturesque villages clustered around them as being the site of the Allied landings during the Second World War. Yet here is where our grandfathers and great-grandfathers risked or gave their lives for our freedom.
We finished the boat ride paying more attention to sunbathing than scenery, but there were some bits where I stirred up enough energy to lift the camera and click the shutter. The boat returned us to Amalfi and we headed back to the coach for the rest of the excursion before heading back to Sorrento. We were to have lunch up in the hills and then go on to Ravello to the famous gardens and open air stage that houses both opera and rock concerts. Next time, same blog...
