The Final Countdown. Day 53: Sorrento - Rome

We had exploded all of our belongings everywhere and had hand washed some items that we had hanging around the place drying. The cabin was pretty squeezy to try to repack, so Dan took the big purple bag out onto our bench seats and table on the balcony, which was a nice way to pack! The morning was cool but warming up - it was going to be a hot one today.

We finished packing with plenty of time to spare so sat out on the balcony pondering what we would do that day. Explore Sorrento? Explore Naples? What was there to do in each of them? Which one(s) had luggage facilities? In the end, we decided to stick with Sorrento as it would be significantly more relaxed, and just pass through Naples. When researching Naples, I was a little put off by all the crime reports…

Trudging up the hill was not an easy task laden with all our luggage, but we managed. I asked for 2 bus tickets and we didn’t have to wait too long for a bus to show up on the other side of the narrow street - it pretty much blocked the entire winding path. It was quite small, so there weren’t enough seats but it was rather spacious so Dan and I could stand up the back with our luggage strewn everywhere and not be in anyones way. It didn’t make many stops at all on the way to Sorrento, and we got off at the train station (after a big fat man wouldn’t move, and the driver closed the door, and I had to do some frantic shouting).

At the station we left our luggage - it was €4 per item and I visibly baulked at this - so they gave us our 3 pieces for the price of 2. I had googled a place for us to eat that opened at 12pm - it was burgers as we were quite happy to not have Italian today. It was too early for this, so we walked down the street towards the main square. On the way, we popped into a big store with lots of drastically reduced prices - I could have bought a lot of things but I don’t need anything or have room for it… Dan was looking at bow-ties but there was no way to see if they were manual bowties or the ones with a clasp, so we abandoned this shop.

Soon we came to a gap where we could see all the way to the ocean, and an impressive set of stairs. We took this, again thinking about the task it was going to be to go back up them again. I kept forgetting that Sorrento and surrounds and built into and on top of the cliff faces. We continued down and down and across and down until we made it to the port. We spent a short amount of time here taking some photos - it was pretty muggy and warm, and I just felt like sitting!

There was a “beach” area here as well, although it’s those fake European beaches, not a proper beach. Basically, some areas had been built up with what looked like hundreds of sun beds - and of course you had to pay to go to it. Pay to go swimming in the ocean! The idea is absurd to me. 

We began the ascent, but from a different set of stairs. At about the 145 step mark it levelled out - although not quite at the top - and we realised we had reached the “Panorama” view. We stopped here to take a few photos, and it started raining quite chubbily on us. I made a sort of dash for cover under a tree, then just stayed back out in it as it was a bit refreshing. It didn’t last long, only a few minutes, and it was back to being humid again. From up here we could clearly see the “beach” below, and all the different coloured umbrellas and different restaurants. I wondered what made each one different from the one before?

After the panorama, we thought we’d now start heading towards the lunch place which was just off the main pedestrian only strip mall. We finally made it when…it wasn’t open. It didn’t open until 5pm. I was appalled - I went back onto all the online resources and everything said 12pm, including their own Facebook page. So I was pretty shitty, and asked Dan if he could just choose something for lunch.

We wandered the streets for a while, and found a place that looked like it did lunch deals, eg, drink and food. But when we sat and started looking through the menu, we realised they weren’t deals at all, and was just the price of the two items combined. I got extra more shitty at this, and wanted to leave. We got up, and walked away. A little way down the street, I saw a restaurant that had good prices on pasta, so we took a seat just as a hoard of tourists rocked up - it was also a Gelateria (and apparently one of the best in Sorrento).

We found a seat before they all sat down, and I went inside to get a menu. The service was actually great considering how many people they had there, and our waitress was very attentive. I ordered the gnocchi in a local tomatoey and basiley sauce, and Dan went with the Penne all’arribiata as it’s something we always joke about - see this video here.

We also got a little bit of wine, which was kept perfectly chilled in a bag of ice water. The day heated up considerably, and we were trying to stay in the shade. Our meals were very tasty, and we got lots of Parmesan too. What we didn’t count on was the hoards of people.

Tour group after tour group - without end, back to back, from TUI (Thompson Unlimited International) were arriving for an ice-cream. Most of the tour groups had up to 20 people in them, some were small with only about 4, but each were led by a tour leader with some kind of brash UK accent, wearing the blue uniform and carrying some kind of ridiculous giant item so they could be identified in a crowd. The items included, but were not limited to, an Italian flag on a stick, a swimming pool noodle, a giant flower on a stem and possibly one of the favourites was one of those giant inflatable football hand signs. I can’t tell you how many groups came through here, but I would guess maybe about 20. I reckon there must have been a cruise ship and everyone was broken up into little groups and traipsed around Sorrento in slightly different orders so they didn’t all descend upon a location at once (Although this failed quite miserably at the ice-cream stop).

This didn’t affect our meal though, as I said our service was fantastic and it was just hilarious to watch them all show up - and to see what the next ridiculous identifying item would be. A giant fan on a stick, an umbrella, one just carried a clipboard (they obviously cheaped out!). Now it was time for us to try this amazing gelato - they had a stupid amount of flavours, and amazing looking concoctions, but we just settled with a few scoops each (3 for me, 4 for Dan!). The list, while a few were missing, was HUGE. I went with limoncello, mulberry and dark chocolate. 

After this, we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. It was still too early to go to the train station, so we meandered through the streets. We found another nice look out point and then sat in a little square in a bit of shade for a while. The man next to us was throwing bits of his sandwich to the pigeons, and we spent probably far longer than acceptable watching the pigeons fight for the food, woo each other (and by woo, I mean, the male chases the female around trying to step on her tail and impregnate her), and then get distracted from the wooing by food again. 

I don’t know why I’m mentioning all this, but it’s probably the sheer amount of time we spent watching and analysing this. Two pigeons flew in with very odd colouring - instead of being grey and shiny, they were white and browns. The male pigeon only had eyes for the female pigeon of the same colours. He chased her around, got distracted by food, and chased her around again. Then, to add a twist to the tale, another set of brown pigeons arrived. And they partner swapped. The original male started chasing around the new brown female pigeon, got distracted by food, chased her again. The new male started chasing the original brown female..and so forth. They literally chased each other around the square.

I don’t think any of the male birds were successful on this day, and eventually we had to drag ourselves away from this intricate mating ritual as it was getting closer to our time to leave. On the way back to the station, we stopped at the supermarket and picked up some things to eat - just some simple sandwiches and some lemon tarts for dessert.

We bought our tickets at the station, collected our luggage and made our way to platform one, sitting ourselves in a little patch of shade. I got up to make my way to the toilet, to realise that we didn’t have the correct coins, the machine didn’t accept what we had on hand, and I wasn’t able to go through to the ticket office to change coins because I was already through the barrier. Holding on it was.

We had about a half hour wait. Only about 10 minutes into that, a train arrived and EVERYONE got off, because it was the end of the line. Some people started hopping on. Dan went to investigate what this train was, and from a distance motioned for me to jump on before too many other people got on. I managed to nab us a 4 seat, and we took up the other two seats in front of us. I fell sleep. When I woke up, the train was getting really, really packed, and as I started gathering my things off the seat in front of me to try to make it free for someone, a man asked if he could sit down.

And we sat here. And waited. And waited. Turns out another train was running late and we needed to use the track, so our train was getting quite packed. I was so glad we had gotten there early and could sit down for the journey! Once in Naples, we did the opposite of what we had done the day before - up from the Circumvesuviana and back into the main station. We had a bit of a wait now until our 6pm train, but eventually a platform was displayed.

We were carriage 6. I was thinking to myself as we walked over to the platform “wouldn’t it be nice if train stations would state where each of the carriages were?” And low and behind, it did! We knew exactly where to stand for carriage 6. It wasn’t long before a train arrived, we barged on, took most of the luggage compartment space and made ourselves comfortable.

The train journey was pretty uneventful, except that we were running quite late. We took off late, and then pulled out of the station and just sat outside there for about half an hour. I ate all my dinner in this time, and made a pretty good headway into the lemon tart cookies too… I wasn’t able to do too much writing on this journey, I was tired and as seems to be the want in Italy, the trains duck in and out of tunnels which block and unblock my ears each time, being very annoying and distracting. No matter, I just dozed a bit.

About 8.30pm we arrived in Rome. Our day was still far from over! We had a little bit of trouble finding our accommodation - we knew though from reading online that we needed to go to a laundromat to check in. Our accom was literally one block from the station, so that was a relief! We couldn’t find the hotel but we found a laundromat, and asked the skinny Indian guy working there is this was the place to check in. “Daniel!” He said, and slowly, slowly started the check in process.

I don’t know what he was doing but this was the slowest check in we have ever experienced, and I just wanted these bags off my shoulders. He was kind though - we learnt afterwards that this wasn’t his laundromat or hotel - we were to meet the owner later. While waiting, and other people coming and going and distracting him by wanting their washing back, a man drove past and shouted at us out the window. “I’m the owner! He’ll help you with everything!” Dan and I were really confused - were we supposed to get in the car? Is this like Pompeii again where our accommodation is elsewhere?

No, the owner parked and came back to us - by now we had handed over money and had received a key - and emphatically introduced himself. “I’m Monty!” He said, shaking our hands violently, and he springboard across the road to an unmarked door. In we went - the key was a bit sticky so if we had any trouble with it, to go over to the laundromat for help - up some stairs, through another noisy door, and we were whisked into our room.

Monty grabbed us a map of Rome and very helpfully circled a lot of things without any explanation, which was quite hilarious later when we were trying to figure out what we should and shouldn’t see. We collapsed in our room for a short while, before thinking - fuck it, let’s get out in this city like we did in Venice!

By now it was about 9pm and we thought we’d go to the Colosseum and see it at night time. The plan was sound in theory, but turned out to be a bit more complicated to execute! We shouldered our cameras and tripods and walked the one block to the station, found the Metro really easily, and descended down. We saw a sign for “Tickets” so we followed that, to end up in a DO NOT ENTER area, with the ticket booths closed. Ok, maybe there are ticket machines closer to the platform?

We retraced our steps and went down one more level - aha, here are all the ticket machines. One was spare, so we jumped on it straight away. Easy enough - we wanted the 48 hour pass, if we started it now it would take us all the way through the next two full days. We couldn’t pay, though. It took us an age to realise the machine wouldn’t accept card, even though it had a slot for it. When we tried in cash, we realised that it only accepted certain notes and coins.

Ok, maybe another machine isn’t as picky. Another machine came up with different combinations of coins and notes, but still no card. This was getting frustrating. I suggested we get a cheeseburger from Maccas just above us to break up the €50 so we could finally use a machine. But how to get up? All the signs were for one way. Stuff it, we just went back up the way we came, which was also rather funny because the signs were still pointing out things on the way. I think maybe it used to be two-way, but recently they changed it to just one, which has some interesting consequences as we found out. 

We grabbed two cheeseburgers, and raced back down to the platform. This time our smaller notes were happily accepted, and we got our tickets. Through the barrier, and we were onto the platform. Weirdly the platform was A LOT longer than it needed to be, and it seemed that the train we needed would only take up a portion of it. We stood where others were, and waited. Not long after we took our first bites of the burger, the train came, so we had to stuff them back in the bag and jump on.

Subterfugerly (this is a word I have made up and use regularly), we ate our burgers while people glared at us for eating on the train. Two stops later we got off at Colosseum and, popping up, there she was, quite well lit up. It doesn’t quite have the same feeling as when you pop out of the station to see Big Ben, but there was a bit of a feeling. I led us to the main side, and we set up right at the back where we could get the whole structure in. After taking a few photos, we noticed some people closer by the beginning so we wandered over there, and continued to take some more photos, albeit more interesting, but almost impossible to fit the whole thing in.

By now we were totally stuffed, and headed back to our accommodation. When we left the train at the station, Dan pressed the button to get off the train, and I laughed at him. I mention this because at this moment, coincidentally, the station alarms began to sound. And continued to sound. And didn't stop. At first we thought it was the closing door noise, but then we realised - no, this is the evacuate the station alarm. The guards weren't exactly trying to get us out of there, nor were they stopping people coming in, however the noise was simply deafening and Dan and I got quite lost trying to get out. When we did pop out, we were completely on the other side and had to walk all the way back again - and through - to our accommodation, sirens still blaring.

We set our alarms stupidly early for the next day - we were going to go to the Colosseum because it turns out the Pope was in town, and we didn’t know how this would affect the Vatican, and didn’t want to risk it. So alarms were set so we could go back to the Colosseum and try to spend less time in a queue buying tickets.

And with that, it was good night. It was a long, long, day.

Til next time,

xx