Chiesa di San Paolo

Travel day! We said goodbye to Rome this morning. Fun stop on the trip, but we’re ready to stop the hustle from one historic site to the next and just relax again in our final stop of Sorrento. We caught an early (but not too early train). All in all it will be about 3 hours of travel; a short local train ride followed by an hour train to Naples, short layover, and an hour train to Sorrento. Very happy to be navigating with all our luggage now despite the extra weight. Also had a pretty good breakfast at the train station; highlights were the fruit / jam / cheese on a pancake and Becky’s Nutella donut sandwich. She was quite excited not to get any chocolate on her white shirt. Since we splurged for the business tickets on the first train, we also got a decent boxed meal. I get pretty anxious around travel, specifically until I’m on the right plane / train / automobile. Beyond a few minor incidents (local Italian train doors open and close very quickly, and get your beautiful wife stuck in them), the travel was pretty uneventful.

We’re staying at the Grande Hotel de la Ville, and managed to drop of our bags before lunch. My initial impression of the town is that it felt a little more like the Caribbean than the other places we’ve been in Italy. Not sure I can describe why, though once we started walking around and got to the shopping areas the vibe changed back to feel more European. Lots of tiny streets with tiny shops. Lemons are a big deal here: lemon art, lemon candy, and of course limoncello, of which I see a bunch of in our future.

After lunch it was time to relax, which is the big theme of our last stop. We left the tiny but well located Rome apartment behind for a hotel with possibly the best rooftop I’ve ever been on. There’s a pool, patio, and bar that are surprisingly pretty empty. We’re 6 stories up and maybe two blocks from the water, but because the coast is reasonably mountainous we can seemingly see for miles. My phone seems to think we’re 200 to 250 feet above sea level. The Gulf of Napoli opens up before us, Mount Vesuvius off in the distance, and a bunch of towns littered across the coast and the peaks. Midjourney describes the view as “a balcony overlooking the ocean, in the style of monsù desiderio, cinematic view, transavanguardia, hikecore”. Couldn’t have said it better myself. After a quick swim, we discovered the roof is a great place to fall asleep to the sounds of waves, boats, Vespas, and Dave snoring.

We had dinner at a beach club (place you can essentially rent space / chairs by the beach for the day) called Bagni Sant’Anna. Remember how high up our hotel was? Yeah that means dinner was climbing all the way down to the beach. The area is known for lots of stairs, and lived up to its reputation. But the views of the sunset on the way down to and during dinner were impressive. We paid for the ambiance, but the food was quite good as well. Fried calamari, sea urchin risotto, potato crusted cod, and some fish we had never heard of were the standouts. The suckling pig was ok. Apparently in this former fishing village, you should still order the seafood. We rewarded ourselves for making it back up all those stairs with some gelato. The place claimed to be the “worlds best ice cream”, which is probably a stretch, but it was probably the best gelato of the trip.

And now it’s off to bed so we can get well rested for tomorrows boat day! Ciao!Read more