Wednesday

Hello everybody. It's Thursday morning here in Sorrento which means it's 4:30 there in Reading. I don't suppose anybody would like a phone call at 4am...... OK, I'll enter the details from Wednesday evening.

When last we wrote, we were settled in Sorrento at a great hotel. After Ally awoke from her afternoon nap, we went took a walk around the streets to scout out the shopping. Sorrento seems to be a very good place to shop for value priced things. We bought some things in Capri, but we were smart enough to know how overpriced it was. Lucca really didn't have much to offer except for cured meat and cheese and I doubt they would allow spoiled salami or rancid provalone on the airplane. Sorrento has a great mix of stores, lots of things caught our eye, so today (Thursday) we shop.

The hotel recommended we take a taxi to the seaport for a nice dinner. So off we went at about 7:30 to the Marina Grande which is one of two seaports here. Marina Grande is where the fishing boats come in so it's very old fashioned/non-touristy and authentic. Most of the restaurants were closed there, but we settled into the Taverna Azzura. Here is a photo of our waiter, from afar it is difficult to notice how much chest hair was bulging out of his shirt, trust me it was prolific.

Hairy Chested Waiter.

Ally's Crab Ravioli

The food was fantastic, we had a bottle of wine (again, only one because were were behaving ourselves), smoked swordfish/salmon/tuna appetizer, gnocci with mozzarella and sauce, crab ravioli (shown in photo) and sirloin steak. $77.00 (in Euros), for another 5 star meal. There just is no way we can appreciate food back in America. Everything here is so robust and flavorful.

After both of our meals in Sorrento, lunch yesterday and dinner yesterday we were given lemon liquor shots on the house. Sorrento is famous for lemons, everything is served with lemons. In keeping with our tradition of stealing something from everywhere we go, I acquired a great linen napkin. It has a mermaid on it that looks like Ally (only with a tail of course).

After dinner we went to a fantastic bar/lounge for coffee. Then back to our hotel for white russians. Of course the white russians were the best thing ever. It's really stupid how good everything that you put into your mouth is here. I really don't understand why everything is different...and better.

Taverna Azzura. Very non-touristy and basic. Great ambiance

Sorrento at night

Ally working the streets so we can afford to get back home

Our private terrace. This is all ours!!!

It was quite an evening. Definitely from start to finish our best day so far.

Sorrento

This is the most beautiful place on earth. Forget Lucca, forget Capri. Sorrento is perfect (so far).

Our hotel is absolutely amazing. We arrived on the ferry from Capri at 11 am and checked in. They gave us a great room, it has it's own terrace (not a balcony, but a complete private terrace that leads to a roof deck that is about 100 feet long and I expect will be private and empty at night since no other rooms lead directly to it. We ate lunch at a fantastic outdoor cafe right on the city square then did some browsing at a store next door to our hotel that had the most beautiful inlaid wood boxes, art, furniture... everything was so beautiful and actually not too expensive. (we may shop there later). Ally crashed when we got into the room and I caught up some work, now I am only 2 days behind which isn't bad at all. I will shut up now and post pictures.

Sorrento From the Ferry

Sorrento Square as taken from our table at lunch. Our hotel is about 200 feet from this spot

Our Hotel

Our Private Terrace

Hotel Pool. You cannot see the lemon trees on this photo, but it is surrounded by lemon trees. (I stole a lemon)

Lemon Trees by Pool

That's Ally all wrapped up the sheets napping and my stolen lemon.

Cemetary in Anacapri

Long staircase up the hill to our hotel.

Most Beautiful Woman in All of Italy

Monday...and Tuesday.

I'm combining Monday and Tuesday together because Ally will not stop telling me how disappointed that we are not keeping up with this blog. When she says "we" she actually means ME, since she hasn't entered anything yet. So, I'll make an effort to get through Monday and Tuesday all in one fell swoop.

Monday was Ally's 40th birthday and the entire reason we ended up in Capri to begin with. Capri has 2 towns, Capri and Anacapri. We stayed in Anacapri which was a wise choice because it is much, much less crowded and much more serene. The actual town of Capri (which is the famous city) is a major league tourist trap, it's the type of place we set out to avoid on this trip. My awesome skills at booking rooms and my undeniable insight into how to always exceed Ally's expectations landed us at a magical place in Anacapri (ok that might be stretching the truth a little bit). We enjoyed Lucca so much that I was scared that if it wasn't wonderful here that it would be a let down, especially on Ally's birthday. If we stayed in Capri it would have been a waste, staying in Anacapri was beautiful as you'll see by the photos. We both said it has to be the most beautiful place in the world.

We rented a cat in Anacapri. This is Honky, followed us everywhere and protected us from mice and other cats. She thought we loved her and would take her home, but we tossed her off the balcony before bed last night.

View of Capri from hillside mansion

Anacapri and Med. Sea from Chairlift Ride.

So...Monday, we awoke at noon which is so uttlery ridiculous especially here where it seems everybody gets up at 4am and goes to bed at 7PM, nonetheless we dragged our selves out at noon or so, and simply walked the town browsing the markets and shops. It was 10 times more touristy than Lucca, but it still wasn't too bad. I think in peak season it would have been bad, but it's off season now so it's OK.

We went off the beaten path and walked down to the Mediterranean Sea along the cliffsides which is where the photos of the rocks and water were taken. It was supremely beautiful. Scattered along the cliffs are houses that had the best views I could imagine anywhere.

Ally is stealing everything she can fit in her bags. I hope Nick reads this, he thinks I steal things...I get blamed for everything.

The biggest problem we have here in Anacapri is the closure of the restaurants at 5PM and then they reopen at 7PM, but only stay open till 9:30. When we wake up at noon, we eat lunch at 4 and then get hungry at about 9:31 and everything is closed. It is very difficult, on Tuesday night our dinner was grapes and 3 bottles of wine because everything was closed.


I am uploading a video of our ride up the chairlift of Monte Solaro, which is the mountain in the middle of the island. The views from up there are amazing. We have photo's to prove it which we may or may not upload. That's about it I guess, nothing real interesting or thought provoking, we had a wonderful 2.5 days here in Anacapri, however it paled in comparison to our experience in Lucca. Then again, Lucca might have been made for us, so it'll always be hard to top.

Next (today..Wednesday) we are onto Sorrento which is a small city on the mainland of italy only about 20 miles from here. From there we will venture to Pompeii which should be very interesting. Again, we will try to post more frequently...we'll see.

Sunday... Travel Day

Sunday was an eventful day. I woke up at 8:30 am and evidently made a lot of noise I woke up Ally and that's not a pleasant thing to do. Once we got past being angry with each other (her for me being insensitive to her sleep, and me mad at her for being such a sensitive whiner when she's awakened), we set off on our journey to Capri. The route was this: Train from Lucca to Florence, transfer then train from Florence to Rome, then transfer train from Rome to Naples, then transfer train from Naples to Sorrento, then Taxi from Sorrento to Sorrento Ferry, then Ferry from Sorrento to Capri, then Bus from Capri ferry to Anacapri town, then be picked up by the guy who runs the B&B we were staying at. We don't know his name, Ally calls him big junk. It seems upon meeting him she was a bit alarmed by how close he got to her. I don't know???

The whole trip was SO much easier than our trip on the first day. We knew where to go, what to do and the suitcases didn't seem so heavy. That is until we got to Naples. Naples is the big city just south of Rome and it is a pit of filth and crime. Never, ever travel to Naples even if you win the trip on a game show. There is nothing I have ever seen that is as scary or horrifying as Naples. I expected dirty and crime ridden, but what we saw was basically 1970's South Bronx for about 80 miles.
Here is a photo of the train we took from Naples to Sorrento

Outside of train

Inside of train

The photo's don;t do it justice. It was truly scary. For 20 minutes or so we had two italian punks jamming pliars into the door safety mechanism trying to short out the train or do something bad maybe 5 feet from us. I swear I was so ready to throw Ally to the side and jam those pliars into their necks that I really did come to terms with the homicidal psychopath that most people know lives somewhere inside of me. It was very weird.

When we finally got to sorrento at about 5PM it was truly beautiful, we are staying there for 2 nights later in the week, it is a small city on a cliff face overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Possibly the most beautiful place we had ever seen. We hopped a taxi from there to the ferry termiinal and headed to Capri. Arriving in Capri about 6:30 PM.

Capri is something that cannot be explained, our B&B had a view that was beyond words. We were so tired from traveling that we didn't get much done on Sunday night, but it was well worth the trip. Details on Capri on the Monday posting.

Patio at our bed & breakfast. This is where we would eat breakfast if we ever woke up before noon!

View from our room.

Ally with the Mediterranean Sea behind her.

Saturday

Ally Saturday Morning....2am. 
Very Happy.

Saturday got off to a typical late start for us. As you read, Friday night we were out all night so Saturday started a bit slowly.

We chose to ride bicycles into town and ride around the top of the wall (photos to follow), it was an amazing experience. Riding our bikes from the B&B to the walled city was rather intense though. The streets are so narrow and winding that you have really no choice but to ride your bike in the traffic and pray that nobody runs you over. Euro drivers are very good at missing things by inches, so they think nothing about driving by you and brushing you with their car mirrors. It's a little scary, but a lot of fun.
After the bike riding our plan was to clean up and enjoy our last night out on the town before leaving for Capri. Once we got back to the B&B we really didn't have the energy for another night out so we ordered Pizza. There is no delivery in Lucca (or anywhere in Italy it seems), so Benito had to take me to town to get a pizza and calzone. Benito speaky no English and I speaky almost no Italia so it was very weird and awkward. I don't have a pic of Benito, I wish I did . He looks like Mario from the video game.

Meat store....

Sat night we went to bed very quietly and behaving ourselves.... At 1 am Liz called which woke us up but it wasnt a big deal. Then at 4 am, Nick called which was a bit more of a big deal. Nick said his dad offered to allow him to call us. Ally and I had a very funny conversation at 4am about whether Scott was not smart enough to understand the concept of time zones OR if he did know what he was doing and just wanted to be a pain in the ass. I think the truth lies somewhere in between, thus making both true.

In any case, it was good to hear from the kids, whether it be 9pm, 1am or even 4am.

Ally and her bike.

"snack bar" in Lucca was like a 4 star restaurant in U.S.A.

View of Lucca from top of building.

Real Italian Pizza

Day 2, Friday Night

Day 2: Part 2


I'm writing about Friday night on Saturday afternoon, it was so good that it took me this long to figure out what to say. We left the hotel at 8:30 and went to Buca De San'Antonio restaurant inside of the Lucca old city walls. It was beyond extraordinary. It is simply not possible that food this good exists in the United States. We actually had a waiter who spoke very good English which made things easier. Ally had Lamb Chops and I had Pork Chops, that really doesn't sound very fancy, but I speak for both of us when I say that we never had any type of meat that was prepared or tasted as good as what they gave us. I should have taken a photo of the food I think. So... we drank a bottle of wine (only one as we were behaving ourselves) and savored every last drop of our dinner, then at 11:00 they tossed us out onto the street when they closed the restaurant.

We began to walk back to get a taxi when we noticed a cluster of people down a cobbled street, we headed down there and found a little sidewalk cafe which was serving wine and pizza. We stopped by there for a nightcap, the wine was $2.00 per glass, so we had one...then another....then another...then another. It was so peaceful and serene, it was very relaxed. The next thing you know it's 1am and they had to close, our last wine was served in a plastic dixie cup. It was so fitting for us to sitting streetside in Tuscany, drinking Italian wine out of plastic cups. It was very Berks indeed.

The next hour or so was spent wandering the streets, totally lost and confused. No map, no taxi, no clue about where to go. We did safely make it home at about 2 am, which is insanely irresponsible and ridiculous, even by our standards. Did we learn our lesson about what NOT to do in a foreign country? Probably not, but it sure was a lot of fun almost having to sleep on the street. We met a man at the train station who actually had the keys to the train station and let us inside. Why? I don't know, he just hauled out keys and let us in. It was weird. I think Italian men like Ally uite a lot, they don't seem to be able to take their eyes off of her.

We'll, that's the very condensed version of our Friday night. There are more details, some humor, some secrets and some inappropriateness of couse.... All in all it was very Ally N Cristian. Mostly dangerous, very inappropriate, but always fun and exciting.

That's all.....

Day 2: This is more like it....

Today was much better... We awoke at 11 am our time expecting to have missed breakfast by only about 2.5 hours, but to our delight when going downstairs we were greeted by our house mother who served us cheese, fruit, quiche, coffee, tea, biscotti, proscioutto and some type of Italian salami that was at least 95% fat. It was the best thing I ever put into my body. It was lightly raining, but alas we headed off to the old city of Lucca to sightsee. As you can see by the photos it is very, very old and extremely retro European, which was exactly what we wanted.

There were not many individual highlights to speak of, the whole day was spectacular. The wine was extraordinary, the people were very friendly (although nobody really speaks any useful english). We took about 50 photos of which I am uploading maybe 6 or 7.

Right now it is 7 pm and Ally is showering, we are preparing for our night out on the town. That will no doubt consist of a lot of wine drinking, a lot of eating unhealthy food and more wine drinking. I do not know when the bars/restaurants close here, but I'm pretty certain that we'll be there when that time arrives.

That's it for now. More to report on in the morning after our evening on the town. \

Lucca City Square (it's actually a circle, but I call it a square), I don't know the word for either circle or square in Italian.

Main street in Lucca, lots of shopping here, but not too touristy. I hate american tourists.

I don't know what this is.

A great little bar/cafe with a very old and short lady at the counter.

Ally drinking Vino

Another bar, more Vino

We must have gotten thirsty with all our walkiing...more Vino

That's it for now. I should have some great Euro-hangover photos at the next posting.

Arreviderci