Southern Italy & Sicily
Day 5 - Rome to Sorrento
Tuesday, 6 April 2004
After a leasurely start to the morning, we took a cab to the Terminal Station to pick up our rental car. Than after walking another 3/4 mile, we got to were the car was parked.
Forty-five minutes later, we finally reached the motorways on the edge of Rome. I have to say, the suburbs on the southern route that we took looked pretty grim. Not poor, just concreate.
Little did I know, that much of the south is like this, specially around Naples.
The drive wasn’t really too painful, driving is really very easy and well enough marked (just keep going straight until you are told otherwise).
To get to Sorrento, you cut across the north of Naples, past Pompeii onto the Piano di Sorrento. I have to say, that part of the trip nearly made me want to turn back. Its grim and not well looked after. However, by the time we made it to Sorrento, things were looking up. The towns were towns, not urban Naples sprawl.
The rental people were very nice and even drove us to the house we rented. It was a two bedroom flat in a large home with a pool and surrounded by a lovely commercial lemon grove. However, I don’t think they were picking the current crop of lemons as they were perfect and still on the trees.
The boys wanted to swim so badly that we let them try. The water was about 50F. We ended up just splashing a little and running around… which was really nearly as good.
At about 4pm we headed out to check out the town, the trains and get some food. We first stopped at a pastry shop and got four great canoli! Then checked the trains. Got some food and walked around town. Its really cute and they have some pedestrian roads as well.
We headed home around 5:30pm and I made a nice dinner of pasta and eggplant and got the kids to bed early as possible.