By the Sweet Sorrento Moon

18th August – Rome to Sorrento

An earlish start, check out of our very attentive Rom-antique Hotel and get on a 2 hour train to Naples. Once there, we needed to find our way to Circumvesuvia train line and there we would find our train to Sorrento – easy yes? Well sort of, there is very little signage so we were told to just follow two other tourists who had asked the tourist office the same thing we did, how do we get there. We just hoped they heard the directions correctly or didn’t stop to go to the bathroom or we could look odd waiting for them. Found the train line and the letters above our train info DIR seemed we would get there very soon. However, in Italian I guess DIR means every single stop not direct as one might have thought. So it was 40 stops to Sorrento and we were still smiling as we were on the way to the beach! 20 min into the trip and I feel some very old hands on my arm pulling me to the other side of the train and a very angry old Italian yelling. Seems I was in his path to the door and he suffered from a condition which meant he couldn’t go around me. Al did his best to keep me calm but I still got in a “Ciao asshole” as he left the train.

We arrived in Sorrento safely and without being man handled again. When we got out of the train station though we must have suckers written on our forehead cause we were quoted 20 euros for a 10 min taxi ride to our hotel and we took it! Still can’t believe we said yes.

We stepped into Mami Camillas and the day was looking up. A little family owned hotel just on the edge of Sorrento. First stop was the beach which was a bit of a walk ... down. Sorrento in perched on cliff tops and to get to a beach (no sand really just water but who’s counting chickens) we had to walk through a cool path they had through the cliff face. After a quick swim I had a date with a cucina (Italian for kitchen). I had signed up for the evenings cooking class. Our teacher (Massimo), two other girls and I were going to cook dinner for the staff and Mami’s guests. On the menu was Arancini balls, homemade pasta with tomato and eggplant, pollo with cream and mushroom sauce and lastly Neopolitan chocolate sponge cake. I didn’t stop smiling the whole time I was in that kitchen, it was the most fun I had had all holiday.

That night Al and I ate with the rest of the hotel and enjoyed the meal I had helped cook with some local vino.