On the move again. We caught the train to Naples, then a private car to the hotel in Sorrento. What a great way to travel! Our driver didn't speak much English, but he did his best to point out some interesting features of the area and pulled over a couple times so we could take some pictures (probably mostly because he wanted to pause for a smoke). After seeing the traffic and the tiny roads, Jeff was glad to not be doing the driving. We checked into our cliff side hotel and paused to check out the view from our balcony before heading down to the lobby bar for a happy hour bottle of prosseco, snacks, and a game of crib.
We booked an excursion for the next day and went up to the rooftop restaurant of the hotel for supper where we got to see our first Sorrento sunset.
The excursion we booked was for a day trip on a 40' yacht. Getting to the yacht was interesting. The road down was a switchback, and so narrow vehicles have to do 3 point turns at each end of the switchback. The yacht did a tour along the coast line before heading over to the island of Capri.
We did a tour around the island, stopping at the blue grotto some a few of the people on the boat could go in (just watching the chaos that was the process of getting people into te grotto was fascinating).
We swung through the green grotto, then got an opportunity to jump into the (icy) Mediterranean sea from the boat for a swim. There weren't many takers, but we both went in for a swim, as did one other couple. After drying off and a glass of prosseco, we continued around the island stopping at the port of the session flowers which was a small grotto full of jellyfish.
We were dropped off in Capri for a few hours where we had lunch, did some wandering and stopped for gelato and beer with the other couple that decided to go for a swim off the yacht. The trip back to the pier by the hotel was more direct, but included some homemade lemoncello. After we got back, we went down to the pool for a swim and some happy hour beers at the pool bar before heading out to find a restaurant for supper with a Texan couple we met at the hotel.
The pool is also where I took the most amazing picture of the trip...
that's right, that's Alaina trying to coax a seagull to come towards her!
We made use of the train (once we finally found the station) to get ourselves over to the ruins of Pompeii. The ruins are massive and we spent around 4 hours wandering around the streets. It was facinating to see but there were a couple issues with the place. One was that a number of sections were blocked off for further excavating or restoration so you couldn't get into them. The other was that the place was so massive it was easy to get lost and you didn't always know what you were looking at. In retrospect, paying for a guided tour might have been a better idea. Then again, the tours are only 1-2 hours and don't go near some of the more interesting places we found. We did get an audio guide, but it wasn't particularly well done, and the signs that tie an area to the audio guide were few and far between and hard to spot.
After we finished in Pompeii we headed back to the hotel to relax for a bit and enjoyed a beautiful sunset from our balcony, which concluded with some dolphins playing in the water below. We went into the center part of Sorrento to find some where to eat and to actually see part of the town (the hotel was actually just outside of Sorrento). We enjoyed a great supper in a little back street before heading back to the hotel for the night, arriving just in time to watch a 30 minute fireworks display (while we'd like to think it was a farewell for us, we figure it was part of one of the weddings that we noticed earlier that day) that rivalled what Regina does for Canada Day.
After we finished at the Vatican we walked into the center of old Rome to do some wandering and a little last minute shopping. We wandered over a bridge into the downtown area and up and down the streets peering into some of the shops. We ended up coming across Piazza Navona (one of the larger plazas with a few bigger fountains and a large church) and the Pantheon. By this time, we were so tired we didn't even go into the Pantheon, just viewed it from the outside before continuing to make our way towards the train station. We stopped at a small resteraunt near the hotel for supper, finishing off our last day abroad.
We were up and out of the hotel by 8:30, headed for the airport in the 2nd cab we took the entire trip. A nine and a half hour flight found us in Toronto where we were supposed to have a 4 hour layover - left ourselves lots of time as a.) we had to clear customs and go through security again before heading to Regina, and b.) we were flying Air Canada... - and were glad we did as our other option was a 2 hour layover, and Air Canada was 25 minutes late arriving, and took 45 minutes to get the bags from the plane to the carousel. We probably would have still made it, but it would have been really tight and the longer layover gave us time for supper (the Toronto airport has a Mill Street Brewery resteraunt - bonus!). Of course, Toronto was getting a huge downpour that day (and was apparently down to using one runway for a while) so our 4 hour layover turned in to 9 hours... We got home around 3am - 11 am in Rome - and managed to get a couple hours sleep before heading out to Mosaic and returning to a normal, stationary life where people drive sanely, road lanes are bigger than that cars that drive in them, and I don't fear for my life every time I step into a cross walk.
