Ah, Naples? How many times have we been here? And how many more times in the future? Between this port and Barcelona, it is a close tie. And, unfortunately Naples isn’t quite as interesting as Barcelona, but that being said – there is still plenty to do. Today, we are going back to Sorrento, because we just love that place – touristy and all. Again, it’s a beautiful, clear and chilly day, so we decide to walk to the train station as our early morning exercise. Good thing too, because for some reason the trams aren’t running. It’s weird – the buses are using the tram tracks as their lanes, but no trams. Hmmm…well, we don’t need them anyway – so it is off on our mile plus hike to the Circumvesuvia station. On the way a snap a picture of that damn castle that has defeated us twice – just for posterity sake.
Then its a straight (well, one turn) hike around the port gates and up to the station. Luckily we decided to leave earlier than we originally planned, and we arrive with 9 minutes to spare before the next train. Any hesitation would have put us half an hour from a train, so we’re pretty pleased with ourselves. Even as the guy at the front of the line keeps talking to the gal in the ticket office, prompting one lady behind us to start yelling at the guy in Italian that we have a train to catch. You go ma’am! Thank you!
It’s simple to buy the tickets (retardo – return) and run down the stairs to the tracks. We hop on the relatively uncrowded train with at least 3 minutes to spare.
The train ride is uneventful. As usual, it gets packed at the 2nd stop, the main train station, and empties out at Pompeii. The funny thing is that there are two couples who board at the main station, one couple sits across from us, the other on the opposite side of the aisle. They are chatting away in Italian, having a good old time. We figure they know each other, but we end up translating enough to understand that “our” couple is on vacation and are leaving for Rome on Wednesday. They chit chat back and forth, and then get a little agitated trying to figure out what stop to use for Pompeii. Couple across the aisle tells them Pompeii Scavi – and we tell them the same, showing them our little train schedule.
Then we sit back and ride the remaining 1/2 hour to Sorrento, as the couple across the aisle then gets confused and wants to know where to get off for Sorrento! We thought they were local – but obviously not – so now we’ve ended up helping the Italians navigate the train stations. Too funny.
At Sorrento, we hop off and head into town, figuring we’ll just wander a bit before going to Azz!, the restaurant we have chosen for today. We find a great little place for cappuccino, Leone Rosso Cafe – again, totally a local joint with huge, cheap cappuccino that is really good.
After wasting time here, we head down Corso Italia, the main drag, to find Azz! We figure we’ll check out the location, then make our way around town and come back later for lunch. As we cross over the Piazza T. Tasso, we notice the street seems to be closed to traffic. Turns out there is a Classic Car and Ferrari Club of Napoli Tour della Penisola going on today. Cool. There are tons and tons of Ferrari and lots of old classic Fiats and other cars lining the streets. We walk up and down marveling at them all.
As we approach Azz!, we see that they are open so we wander in. There is one girl there prepping in the open kitchen. We ask if they are open, she says 1 pm for food – but drinks now. We figure what the heck, we’ll have a drink and then figure out what to do about food while we sip. We can’t wait until 1, as that will put us on too tight a schedule to get back to Naples comfortably (or at least without stress and irritation).
So we order or drinks and surf the web looking for other restaurants, even though this place is really adorable and cozy, with great tile wall decor and cool double melted candles.
As we sit, the owner, Raffaelle, comes in with supplies for the day and then leaves again, ostensibly to park his scooter. We’re done with drinks, so we ask the waitress for the check, but she says the owner is coming back soon, and to wait, we can order early. So nice! So we wait, and he does come back early and we do order early – two pizzas – one with bacon and smoked mozzarella for me and one with sausage and ham for Ed. Badness, but when in Napoli (or at least close to Napoli), one must have pizza!
As we are waiting, the Car Rally begins, and we have a front row seat for all the cars as they leave Sorrento. The amazing blue Ferrari (a new color I’ve never seen), all the red Ferrari in a row, the cute old Fiats and the odd Lancia that looks like a Dodge Dart.
But the best is the classic Italian lady with the double strand of pearls and the little dog on her lap! Love her. And when she sees us (the waitress and me) taking pictures, she rolls down the window and talks to the dog to make him look at us. Priceless.
Now back to the pizza! Raffaelle announces they are ready and he doesn’t want them to get soggy, so we plop back down at our table and commence to chow. I know we’ll be regretting all these carbs in a few days, but for now – its heaven.
As we eat, Raffaelle sits down to chat and we tell him the reason we came here is because he is the only person who is truthful in his responses on TripAdvisor. We were so enamored with his candor over the past few months, we knew we had to come. There ensues a long conversation about TripAdvisor, people, food snobs, you name it. The conversation devolves into Sorrento, plans to close the street to make it one way and have a bigger pedestrian area, the possibility of petitioning for outside dining space, how business wanes in the winter, etc., etc. He is just as wonderful and funny in person as he is online!
Totally worth trip to come visit! As we are ready to leave, his wife brings us over shots of something grappa-like? Don’t know – but they weren’t bad, I actually finished most of mine. We bid a fond farewell as we finally head out the door to wander around the old town of Sorrento and do some window shopping.
We are looking for numbers for our house and figured Sorrento was the perfect place to find those ubiquitous Ceramic plaques with numbers. The problem we have is we also need a letter, which is harder to find, but hopefully here, we’ll be lucky. Turns out not to be our lucky day – there aren’t even any number plaques to be seen. Interesting. We’ve always seen them here. No matter, we still have other things on our list, like a change purse for our coins, since my Chiang Mai wallet has finally had a blow out. I’ve been waiting for this day, the change purse clasp is an issue, so much so that I actually bought 2 wallets to have a back up. But the back up is in North Carolina and not doing me a darn bit of good in Sorrento. So we scour the leather shops and end up with a nice little change purse of the softest leather for us to use the balance of the trip. Our final purchase are some delicious looking limoncello cookies. Yum. Snacks for the crossing (if they make it that far).
Shopping done, we head back to our train and Naples.
We luck out in the train department and actually catch the fast train back, zipping past the coastal scenery with barely any time to take pix.
Once back in Naples, we slog back to the ship, walking at our fastest pace because rain is threatening, and while we have the umbrella we’d rather not get drenched. We successfully avoid most of the rain, only stopping to take a picture of this great old building under restoration….
…before making our way back into the port and onto the ship for our last night on the Mediterranean leg. Next stop, Turnover day and Civitavecchia.
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