View of Sorrento from our hotel.
When we booked our trip to Italy, we knew that November was the rainiest month of the year. Despite this, we had surprisingly good weather. But if I ever hoped that we'd visited in a warmer month-- it was when we reached Sorrento.
Sorrento is a beautiful town. Buildings are perched on the coast along cliffs, there are sweeping views of Naples and Mount Vesuvius across the bay, and there are long stretches of beach. We treated ourselves to a top-notch hotel during our stay in honour of our third wedding anniversary this past September. But because it was off-season, the steps down to the beach were closed, the pool was closed and a constant drizzle had settled over the area. One could imagine how easy it would be to enjoy Sorrento in the summer with blue skies and sun.
One of the appeals of Sorrento is its proximity to Pompeii. Pompeii is an ancient Roman town that was buried and mostly destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. At the time of eruption, there were approximately 20,000 people living in the town.
A main road in Pompeii.
I for one had no idea Pompeii was so huge! We wandered street after street after street. Although the eruption caused a huge amount of destruction in the city, the lava flow also acted to preserve many of the buildings and Roman artifacts.
Artifacts recovered from Pompeii excavation.
The Roman equivalent of a modern day fast food joint.
A giant ampthitheatre in Pompeii.
One of the things we saw in Pompeii that was pretty amazing (you know, aside from all the ruins) were trees. In particular, the bark on these trees-- they were like a work of art in and of themselves. It looked like it had been painted on with oil or acrylics.
Pretty Italian tree bark.
When the weather was clear, we had a perfect view of Mount Vesuvius. Personally, I think Mount Vesuvius is kind of wimpy looking. Mount St. Helen's is way cooler! But at one point, there was a little bit of snow at the summit of Mount Vesuvius!
A little bit of snow on Mount Vesuvius.
On our second day in Sorrento, we drove along the Amalfi Coast. In many ways, it reminded me of the road to Hana on the island of Maui in Hawaii. It was narrow (although not as narrow as the road to Hana), ocean side and winding. Part of the movie, Under the Tuscan Sun, was filmed in the town of Positano along the Almafi Coast. We enjoyed some unexpected sunshine, and perused some ceramic work in local galleries.
Tom and I on the Almafi Coast.
In the afternoon we left the Almafi Coast behind and headed inland to visit the the ancient Paestrum Greek temple ruins. The weather was pretty erratic at this point, and we could hear thunder all around us-- plus, we barely made it in before the final entrance time, so we only had 45 minutes to look around. The city was founded somewhere around 600-BC. The temples were very well preserved, but the city remains were barely recognizable-- especially after spending the previous day in Pompeii.
Greek ruins at Paestrum.
The next morning we packed up our suitcases, crammed them into our car, and headed back towards Rome. We had an early flight to catch the next day (6:10am, bleh), so we planned to spend the night in an airport hotel. On our way back into the city, we stopped at the Roman ruins of Ostia Antica. This turned out to be one of the most interesting ruins we visited. Unlike Pompeii and Paestrum, there was limited restriction of where we could walk within the ruins, so we could go inside houses, up stairs and in between buildings.
There were several school groups visiting at the same time, so we had to wind our way around giant hoards of children. Unfortunately we also timed our visit poorly, and arrived near the last entry time. We only saw about half of the city (apparently there was a port corresponding with the ancient path of the river) before a lady with a whistle started herding us out to the main gates.
Roman ruins, Ostia Antica.
And that was it! The next morning we caught our flight to Frankfurt, and then continued on to home. We've recovered from our jet lag, and are getting back into our normal routine-- just in time for Christmas! I have one more post featuring some random photos that didn't make it into my previous posts, and then we'll call it a wrap on Italy.
No comments:
Post a Comment