Sad to leave Rome, but Sorrento is something I have been looking forward to all year now. During our 2006 trip, almost to a person, it was the highlight city/night of the trip.
The Bay of Naples (seen above) is one of Italy’s larger sea ports on the Mediterranean or rather Tyrrhenian Sea. According to Theo, originally this bay was a Latin/Greek colony, as the word Neoploiton (root word neo = new) or being from Naples means “new town” or “new comer”. Various cruise ships seem to stop here to unload tourists to nearby Pompey, which we will tour tomorrow. You can see Mt. Vesuvius on the left in the picture which towers above Naples. Depending on which Geologists you talk to, some will call it a dormant volcano, while other Geologists like to say it is due for an eruption in the near future.
Meta de Sorrento is a sea cliff town, which has very narrow streets, so narrow in spaces that buses cannot navigate. We actually had to leave our bags at the bottom of the hill for a shuttle to port them up to the hotel. Our hotel we stayed in this time was the same identical hotel we stayed at in 2006. It is hard to point out, but it appears on the edge of the cliff in the middle left of this photo.
Here is a cool house that is actually self-contained inside a giant sea-wall. We really got a kick out of this person’s house.
Those of you who truly know me, may already know this… but I am one of the luckiest humans you will ever meet while you walk the face of this earth. I don’t know how, why or what I did in a past life to be able to claim this fortune, or maybe being Irish hasn’t hurt my chances over the last 39 years? I can point to countless events that have unfolded throughout the course of my life, and it just seems that I have always been blessed in given situations and life events more so than your average happy-go-lucky person. So you should know that when I tell you that this next part is beyond the normal realm of my uncanny Irish luck, and that I got INSANE Shamrock Leprechaun lucky with my Sorentto room assignment. In fact, I’m claiming that landing this particular hotel room might just rank up there as my 9th symphony of pulling things out of my lucky hat.
This time, Meer & I hit the jackpot! Here are a few shots of our view, and I just can’t say enough about it. Sad to say that mostly everyone else in our group got stuck on the lower floors, with little or no view of the Ocean, and virtually nobody else (other than Theo & Gloria) got to enjoy the view that Meer & I enjoyed. It eventually became our running joke was that we were EF tour VIPs or Diplomats who had come to expect such a luxurious treatment for the duration of the trip.
This of course did not sit well with other group members, who were understandably a bit green with envy due to our superior lodgings. Some even stooped so low as to make fun of us calling it the honeymoon suite or something to make themselves feel better, but we knew better. Stacie and Rentar are probably fed up having to hear about it by now. Hell, we even “slummed it” and allowed a whole group of them to come up to our room to hang and enjoy the view.
VIDEO CLIP (hit play for a clip of our view)
After dropping our bags in the Taj Muhal, we put on our bathing suits and headed down the road for some lunch. With a small kitchen and about a dozen patrons, we easily lost 1 & ½ hrs for pretty crappy pizza with barely any cheese. Eventually we got sprung from that place and went down the steps to a public beach area along a rock jetty. Meer tried to catch a crab or two in the rocks, and the kids posed for pics. The water wasn’t too cold, about 64 degrees or so I’d gander. Here are some beach shots of the general area that we went swimming in.
Dinner at the hotel was pretty lame, but nothing could ruin my mood at this point. Theo arranged for most of the group to take a bus tour into Sorrento (proper) which I didn’t want any part of. I knew from our prior trip that sunsets of the deck from across our hotel are the attraction of this location. Lucky for me, 2 students (Bria & Natalie) opted to stay behind, and so I was their appointed chaparone who was able to stay back with them. I was so happy they decided to stay behind that I took them over to the café and treated them Gelato cones, as the 3 of us sat out on the balcony and got some fantastic sunset shots that did not disappoint.
This was the same spot 3 years earlier that the Spafford girls, Jimmy P, and Stacie all enjoyed the same kind of evening, but sadly none of them were able to be there with me again to enjoy such a fine evening, so these sunset picture are dedicated to them. (Ala the artistic empty chairs shot)
At night, we hung out on the balcony with Meer, Stacie and some of our graduates senior girls (Sam, Madeline, & Emily.) Rentar went off to bed, as he was a zombie at dinner and we thought it ill advised to wake him. The harbor was lit up at night, but getting a good shot of it proved rather hard to do right. Freakish giant slugs came out of the seawall at night, which Stacie fended off using multiple stick attacks. Much to Meer and my dismay, one highly trained slug, who we nick-named 'Sluggo' might have had his acting career cut short as Mrs. Boris gored him & cast him off the sea cliff into the abyss.
After retiring back up to the penthouse, I dragged my bed up to the picture window, so that in the morning when I woke up, the first thing I would look at was the blue expanse of the Sea in front of me. It was hard falling asleep wondering what I would miss more, 1) knowing I’d have to eventually give up the room or 2) this night would be our last spent in Italy. Tomorrow is Pompey and an overnight ferry to Greece. Half the trip is now over.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment