Years of Poems and Spirits

We arrived in Sorrento yesterday evening. Took a side trip to Pompei. We’ve heard of this ruin for so long. Bing just wanted to see the cast of dead people and lost interest fast. Song really enjoyed the trip.

Sorrento is a small sea side town. There was a well known song “Come back to Sorrento”. There are tons of tourists here. A lot Germans among them. We lived outside of the town in a B&B. Pretty simple lodging but has a wonderful view of the town, the sea and Mount Vesuvius in the horizon.

The land in this area seems just drop right into the sea. All towns are built on huge cliffs. We were about to visit the famed Amalfi coast further north-east but rain falls couple of days ago apparently caused land slide that sealed a major portion of the road.

It was certainly a disappointing news. We’d seen pictures of Amalfi towns before and they were breathtaking. We woke up at 7 this morning just to catch a bus to downtown Sorrento only to learn the road closure. Locals might afford not to go home for a day. But for action ready tourists like us, it was disaster.

Song and I were wandering about the town, not knowing where to go. We found a Tourist Office that had fliers about local attractions. On a whim, we decided to visit an island just off the coast, Capri. We walked on to a ferry and were curious what the little island could offer.

But, man, what a surprise! The island was a darling! As the boat getting nearer, the overcast clouds started part ways like stage curtains. In between clear Mediterranian water and a blue sky, there stood this little island like a giant piece of rock.

After we disembarked, we took a funicular (tram) up to the town. The town was on a flat area between two peaks at both ends of the island. This was a Saturday and there were tons of tourists. It appeared that, prior to being discovered by the first tourist book author, the town was only fit for small population. The town square in front of the main church was very tight and the streets, if they could be called as that, were even tighter. With so many people, we felt we were part of a human conveyor belt.

But we did hop off the “conveyor belt” and looked for some serenity. There was a picturesque, zig-zag road that started at the edge of the town to a marina. It was pretty quiet because there was sign warning of rock falling. Sure enough, the dangerous part was easy to pass and the view was more than rewarding. Before reaching the marina, there was a sign points to trails leading to a nudist beach. Never been to one before, I was naturally curious and tried it out. It was not much a beach but full of rocks. Most of people were there to sun themselves, only a few were swimming. Not wanting to sit among naked and baking bodies with my pants on, I chose to swim. But the rocky coast made the sea even rougher, I was helplessly dragged back to water a couple of times when I tried to get ashore. It was wild.

The last ferry back to Sorrento ran at 5pm. But we did save some time for sightseeing. The town seems to cater high end customers, for there are many fashion clothing stores, each trying to out-decor the other. We bought two bottles of water and had some exquisite ice creams. When the bill came, it was 20 euros. As a Beijing slang has it, we were “butchered”:)

Still, we plan to visit the island again tommorrow.