Meeting Andrea

When we came south from Rome, I had always thought that there might a chance to meet Andrea, my Italian teacher. We initially came to Sorrento to use it as a base to see Pompei and a little sight-seeing around here. I knew Andrea was around here somewhere, but I wasn’t sure exactly where. Turns out he lives in Salerno and that with a bit of effort we could go there to hello. And yesterday, we did happily make our way to this lovely city on the Gulf of Salerno and had a thoroughly good day. We ended up discovering a new love. A new city.

But this morning was our time, albeit brief, to meet Andrea. We had tickets on the 8.25am ferry back to Sorrento, stopping off at the island of Capri, where Emperor Tiberius built himself a palace to get away from Rome, so we decided to meet at 7.30am at a bar near the ferry terminal.

Sure enough, as we approached the bar, Andrea was outside waiting for us. His face lit up the moment he saw us and with arms outstretched he gave us both huge hugs and many welcomes and so good to meet yous. I did the same. We have been meeting online weekly for around five months where we have extremely engaging lessons about all manner of things in Italian, and yes, including grammar, so the opportunity to be with each other face to face was a huge thrill for me. I think it was for Andrea too.

He bought us coffee and we sat outside. I introduced Chris to him properly and I gave him a gift I had bought with me from home, a limited-edition print of a watercolour by a local Newcastle artist of Nobbys Head and lighthouse. It’s quite lovely and I am confident that he liked it. He messaged later and told me that his wife also loved it. I wrote a meaningful card to go with it, and Andrea exchanged with me a letter he wrote for me which I read when I got back to Sorrento.

Our meeting, like our lessons, flowed smoothly. He is such a lovely man, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, articulate. And a superb teacher, always positive, reassuring and encouraging, even when mistakes abound. He is very easy company. It was a shame we had such little time for I would loved to have talked about life a whole lot more with him. Still, we had our meeting, and it was a positive and lovely thing to do. Andrea accompanied us across the road to the ferry terminal where we said our goodbyes with hugs and many smiles and goodbyes.

The ferry ride to Sorrento was uneventful apart from the fact that we had to change ferries at Capri. We waited all of five minutes to board another, effectively empty ferry. At that time of the morning all the tourists are going to Capri not coming from Capri.

We caught the lift up to the top of the cliffs and to the township where we had a drink, then back to Hotel Michelangelo to rest up a bit and have a nap. We had a quick swim in the hotel pool then I did some writing and Chris had a bath.

As this was our last night here, we decided to splurge on dinner as we hadn’t eaten anything all day. We found La Basilica, a lovely restaurant where I enjoyed a cannelloni in some profoundly wicked cheese sauce, and Chris had squid. A nice cold beer washed it all down, before we did a passeggiata through the vicolos again where the markets are situated. Chris bought two linen shirts. Very nice. Finally, a small tub of gelato each to round out the evening and head on back to the hotel.

We leave tomorrow morning to return to Naples where around midday, we’ll hop on a fast train and head up to Florence. You probably know that Italians call it Firenze, so Firenze it shall be.Read more