Saturday, July 24, 2010

Vacation - Napoli and Sorrento


We went to Napoli
and sorrento on
vacation last week,
and we got to see
Pompeii, Capri
and the Amalfi
coast.

[view of Vesuvius
from Sorrento]



It's too hot in southern Italy to actually go outside during July, but we did anyway
leading to our visit to Pompeii being like the bataan death march.

We stayed a few days in Napoli, (best pizza in Italy) then moved down
the coast to Sorrento taking a hydrofoil across the bay. The hotel in Sorrento
was the Plaza that has a rooftop pool. I'd like a service that could pick you up
by helicopter in Pompei and just fly back and drop you in that pool.

Unfortunately there's no service yet, so we took the CircumVesuviano train
back around to Sorrento, which is a pretty hot dust covered crowd leaving
Pompei. Luckily the Plaza is only about 2 blocks from the station, so we were
safely submerged in cool water 15 minutes after getting back.

The key to getting the best experience out of Pompeii is to go to the Archealogical
museum in Napoli first. Our bad luck there was a strike or some protest
that meant it was open, but we'd have to cross a crowd of angry napolitanos to
get in; no thanks. Most of the best mosaics and casts of people killed in Pompeii
were there.

Also I didn't get up to Herculanum and Vesuvius itself. I figure that next time
we come back it will still be here. After our vacation in NYC in August 2001 I
thought we'd have another chance to go to the WTC and go up to the roof, since
it was rained out when we went. But no. In this case we should be pretty safe
that no jerkwad is going to fly a plane into mount Vesuvius (they are welcome to
try though) so we'll go back some day to Napoli to eat the excellent deserts and
go to the museum and up to the volcano.

1 comment:

Tour Italy Now said...

Italy is great isn't it? I'm planning to go to Italy this coming winter and I'll be sure to visit those sites you mentioned. I hope I didn't make a mistake by taking my travel package from TourItalyNow.com. I'm looking forward to visiting Italy.

Great blog by the way. Kudos!