Monday, August 13, 2012

Italian Adventure

Day 11
Up early to catch the 5am airport shuttle for our 7am flight to Rome. All went smoothly. Had to ask about which carousel to collect from as nothing was displaying our flight number. Why do they make two flight numbers for the one flight?
After collecting our luggage we headed towards the train station and asked at a desk the best way to get to the Camping Roma, and were told their was a shuttle leaving in a few minutes, wahoo! After the ordeal yesterday I wasn't keen to navigate public transport system again. That was a great option, turns out the other people we had been on tour with in Spain who travelled to Rome before us paid more for public transport than we did for the shuttle.  The only down was we arrived 2.5hours before we could check in. We went to put our luggage into storage and planned to waste that time by the pool and using Wifi, but then we saw Katie, one of the girls from our last tour who is on our next one too. She was heading out to explore Rome, and gave us the key to her chalet... she had 3 spare beds in there due to a booking error! We were thankful to have a nap, we were so tired!!
After our power nap we spent the rest of the day chatting with Katie and enjoyed dinner at the campground restaurant.

Day 12
7:45am start on the bus. A full bus, not a seat left. A bit of a shock after our last half full bus of luxury in Spain.
We were off to Pompeii were we had a fantastic two hour guided walk about, with a great guide named Antonio. A truly incredible place to visit. So much to see, we only saw a small portion (obviously, there's a whole town to explore!) It was pretty hot with not a lot of shade.
Then off to Sorrento with a few stops on the way in little towns.
We started our evening there with a limoncello tasting... very tasty limoncello in "Fat Tony's" store. We then had a set menu dinner, one of the included meals. It was tasty but not amazing. Followed that up with a nice cocktail (a Hello Kitty, sadly presentation was somewhat lacking) and beer at a bar before walking back home to the camping ground.

Rediscovered room in a Pompeii house
That's us!
Cast made from a cavity left by a man, as he would have been when Vesuvius erupted
More of Pompeii, that's Mt Vesuvius in the background, the peak on the right. The higher peak on the left wasn't there when Vesuvius blew

Tony, the Limoncello guy, explaining how to make limoncello. This was interspersed with him singing along to Frank Sinatra
Day 13
8am on a boat to Capri, I really didn't feel flash by the end of that, despite taking antinausea. Some others didn't look great either, but the strait was a bit choppy. Once on the land I felt a bit better.
We took a combo of bus and convertible taxi to go to Capri town then Anacapri. We bought a few things for a picnic and then had it for lunch at the top of the chairlift. It was definitely worth the €10 for the view. It was awesome, from the top there was a true panoramic view all around the island.
Later we went back into Sorrento town for dinner where I had a delicious risotto. The restaurant was really cute, very italian. We stopped on the way home to try gelati from the place our tour leader recommended. Deciding on a flavour was really tricky, there were over 60 to choose from! I picked ricotta & pear and also panna cotta. If I ever see ricotta and pear again I will definitely get it, that was the most delicious flavour I've ever had.

A house on Capri Island. Simon wants it.
On the chairlift up to the top of Capri
This is Sorrento, it's so pretty!
Day 14
Up at 6am to get on the road early and beat the traffic, a very good idea. The drive today was stunning... a scenic drive down the very narrow Amalfi Coast road. It's hard to imagine the beauty of this coast without seeing it. The mountainous cliffs on one side, with towns built into the rock, vineyards climbing over sloping levels and sea as far as you can see on the other. We stopped off in a few little towns and had a few hours in Amalfi town itself where we relaxed and wandered about. It's a beautiful little place.
It was really quite a long day of driving all up, but a good one motion sickness wise... I was fine!
That was the last day of the the Italian tour and we were back in Camping Roma for a night, finally got some washing done before we went to sleep.

Amalfi Coast
Hanging outside a shop in Amalfi town
More beautiful Amalfi coastline
Vineyards built up the cliffs on the Amalfi coast

Day 15
Had a beautiful sleep in, in our tiny bungalow, it was lovely to not need to be up until 9:30. We then checked out of the camping ground and headed to our airport hotel. We consulted the info desk at the camp ground first, because we didn't want a repeat of Madrid's adventure. The instructions he gave were great, until we got off the train at the other end, only to find the stop he told us to get off at wasn't really the right one and the bus drivers we asked told us conflicting info of what direction to head in... but none of them went far enough anyway to get to the hotel.
then attempted to follow the directions to the airport hotel we had from the camp ground information desk. The train bit was easy, but took time... then we were a bit stuck, the map he had printed for us didn't actually show us the hotel, but instead a bit of the right road.... but only the bit outside the train station, not from there to the hotel. Tried catching a bus, got different stories from different drivers, and eventually spotted a taxi, which we caught. Probably would have been both quicker and cheaper to have got a taxi from the camping ground. So after 3 hours with our packs on our backs, and in the sun we were a bit stuffed and didn't have the energy to head into town and back out again. We come back to Rome later anyway.
We had a little nap, then out for a little stroll for two things. We wanted dinner and wifi. The hotel had it, but we weren't going to pay an extra €7 for internet but we found a petrol station with free wifi and a seating area nearly next door.
A relaxed pizza dinner then home to bed.

The next update will be of Croatia!

Anita & Simon   xoxo

1 comment:

  1. looks like you are having a great tour - brings back some memories.

    ReplyDelete