Naples to Sorrento.

Wednesday 3rd February
Naples to Sorrento
Overnight Harriet contacted us having detailed Jim to read Grandpa’s diaries and gave us the names of all the villages around Salerno where he’d been in 1944. So now I’m on a real mission to visit these places and the first and most embarrassing job was to tell our hosts that after only one night we are bailing out as we had so many places to see.Anyway that done we decided to have a wander in the ‘old quarter’ of Naples but no sooner had we started than it began to pour with rain.

A typical street in Naples up which a bus can easily pass a transit van as well as being overtaken by a Smart car at the same time.

We have resisted buying an umbrella on this trip as we really can’t carry anything else, but we had to give in. Even that wasn’t much good so to be frank we didn’t really do Naples justice and beat a hasty and soggy retreat to the car – which is where we met the lady who took us to the Autostrada because her car was parked behind ours!
It took some time to get out of Naples but we managed it although the toll roads kept appearing from nowhere. Then south to Pompeii skirting around Vesuvius which fortunately was behaving today but sadly shrouded in low cloud. Pompeii itself is easy enough to find, it’s just finding somewhere to park that’s tricky. Anyone in their right mind would go in a bus. Eventually an octogenarian with no teeth appeared from nowhere and told us we could park outside a closed pizzeria and charged us 7euros for the pleasure, and no sign of a receipt. It was all so dubious that Vivi never really had time to enjoy the ruins as her mind was permanently focused on what the chances were of us ever seeing the car and our bikes again. Partly because as soon as we had parted with the money he told us we had to be back in 1 1/2 hours as they were locking the place. Pompeii is meant to take about 4 hours so it was a very speedy tour.






The Honorary Arch

Little fountain inside a very large house.









External walls to Pompeii




It is not a place to visit in the rain, February probably isn’t such a good month either as a lot of the exhibits are closed for renovation (or just closed). Also at the end of the day it is just a very old town with every building demolished to about head height but anything with a brick or stone archway has survived. There are some ghoulish bodies mummified in volcanic ash and even a dog which looks as if it died very uncomfortably.
Some of the buildings go back to 300BC ,and still had their wall paintings and murals intact which was interesting and the fast food outlet, public latrines and brothel are let’s face it a ‘must see’ for anyone.







Ghoulish human torso mummified in volcanic ash.





A poor old dog, his head is upside-down facing to the right at the bottom, the two black circles don't seem to be anything relevant!









The High Street - 2000+ years old!










A mural in one of the houses.





So we left and found our toothless octogenarian grinning broadly, several more cars had been lured into his web, our car was fine and once again we had to say to ourselves – what a jolly decent chap!!
In the rain we then set off to try and find somewhere to stay in Sorrento and that is where the kind man lead us halfway around the town to deposit us at the Hilton which looked very nice but as Vivi has said previously at 220 euros a night B&B wasn’t within our budget! Eventually we found the Deluxe Hostel Ulisse which had everything we needed including underground parking and was just fine.