October 3, 2022
I hope that I wasn’t too hard on poor old Naples in my last post! As I had mentioned in my first paragraph, the city did start to grow on me, and I hope to write another post about Naples (and my trip to Pompei) when I return to Naples before flying back to London. For now, I’m skipping ahead to my two days in serene and beautiful Sorrento, a resort town about an hour away by train from Naples. Perched above the sea, and backed by green-clad mountains, the setting is as picture-perfect as the town. And it is clean! Very reliant on tourism, this town aims to please, as does my lovely accommodation with its outdoor seating and dining area, and my own little kitchen.
On my first day, I had about two hours to explore Sorrento before going on an organized farm tour in the afternoon so I headed first to Piazza Tasso in the centre of town.
From there, I walked towards the sea to reach the Villa Communale, a small public park with views across the Bay of Naples to Vesuvius. Down to the right is the Marina Piccola where ferries come and go from Naples, Capri, and towns along the Amalfi Coast. Also below there was a series of sunbathing docks where people on holiday pay to lounge on deck chairs, swim in the sea, and sip cold beverages.
Near to the park was a 14th century Franciscan church and its adjacent peaceful cloister. Above the cloister there is a photo exhibit entitled “The Italians” by a local photographer, Raffael Celentano, and one of his wonderful photos is of nuns having fun swinging on the monastery’s terrace. The terrace and swing are accessible with admission to the exhibit but I was satisfied with a photo of the entrance poster.
Also nearby were several grand old buildings, a lemon-yellow church, and a beautiful garden hiding the entrance to one of the town’s upscale hotels.
I ended up wandering happily around the narrow, pedestrian-only streets of the old quarter, that were filled with shops selling clothing, jewellery, handbags, shoes, and every imaginable kind of lemon-based or lemon-themed product such as bottles of limoncello, lemon candies, lemon soaps, lemon-covered ceramics, aprons, and even little girls’ dresses.
Soon it was time for me to meet up with the shuttle bus for my “Azienda Agrituristica la Masseria” tour – a two-hour farm tour followed by a dinner cooked by Mama. The bus ride itself was so much fun along the very narrow and windy Amalfi coast road with its beep-beep-beep-necessary corners. I sat right at the front and on the righthand side, with views of the curves ahead and of the cliff edge right beside me with the sea far below (my mom would have been petrified!).
We arrived at the farmhouse which was built in the 1700s out of local volcanic stone. The current family, and the hosts for our tour and dinner were: Mama, Papa, and their two sons Raffaele and Eugenio. The farmhouse and six acre farm have been in their family for four generations, since 1898.
Eugenio was an excellent tour leader and I learned so much about their organic farm operation. Their principal crop is lemons, but they also grow olives, kiwis, oranges, grapefruit, figs, and chestnuts, and their vegetable garden produces tomatoes (Romas for making tomato sauce, and beefsteak tomatoes for Caprese salads), peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and herbs. The animals on the farm include two goats (who eat the weeds below the lemon trees), chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and two milk cows. The farm is built on terraces with a stream running deep in the valley below that provides irrigation in the hot summer months. A cluster of wild chestnut trees on the lowest terrace provides wood for the posts that support the nets which are necessary to protect the lemon crop from hail storms during the winter.
The view across the valley of villas and other farmhouses and terraced lemon groves was beautiful!
After our very interesting and educational tour, the family hosted a delicious four-course dinner accompanied by their house-made wine. I sat with Stacy, a solo traveller from Wisconsin, and with a couple from New York, and it was a pleasure to have a relaxed dinner and good conversation in such a unique setting. Thank you, La Masseria, for your hospitality and for the excellent and gracious welcome to the Amalfi coast!
On my second day in Sorrento I was very excited to visit the Bagni Della Regina Giovanna which is a large pool that is fed by the sea through a natural rock arch. The pool is named after Queen Joanna of Anjou who reportedly enjoyed bathing here (the Angevins ruled Naples for part of the 13th and 14th centuries), but more than a millennia before that it was incorporated into a Roman villa built by Pollius Felix in the 1st century AD. I travelled to the Capo di Sorrento by local bus and walked down this steep paved lane and then onto an even steeper path that led towards the sea.
This was my first view down to where the villa was built at the tip of the Capo di Sorrento headland. The Amalfi coast was as popular with the ancient Romans as it is with today’s tourists, and many of the wealthiest Romans built large villas here.
This is the view towards Vesuvius from atop the villa site.
Below this level, and surrounding it on three sides, were the remains of walls and several vaulted rooms that one could enter. In some places, the building stones and bricks were still partially covered in plaster that would have been painted with colourful frescoes.
After exploring the ruins, I took several photos down to the Bagni di Regina Giovanni. This is the view from above the rock arch, looking down to the pool and small rocky beach below.
And this is the view from the other side, looking towards the natural rock arch and the sea beyond.
And then I went down and had a swim!
The water was a wonderful temperature and seemed very buoyant. Many tour boats passed by on the other side and it was fun to go up and down with the swells that they created. There was evidence all around of the Roman use of this place and it felt very special to be part of the continuum of the history here.
After my wonderful swim, I returned to my accommodations to make lunch, have a rest, and start this blog post. Then, in the late afternoon, I headed back into town to visit Marina Grande which is a small harbour and old fishing village just to the west of Sorrento. On the way, I made a stop to peer down into the Vallone dei Mulini, the Valley of the Mills, which is a deep gorge that runs through the middle of Sorrento and down to the sea (it is covered over by roads near to Piazza Tasso and comes as quite a surprise when you come up to a railing and look down into it!). In the gorge are the ruins of saw- and flour mills that operated into the 19th century. The stairs visible in the photo on the left were carved into the cliff face over 2000 years ago!
Here is my first view of Marina Grande.
The route down passed by a beautiful tree and bush blooming different shades of pink, and then through an Ancient Greek gate that was once part of the fortifications of the city of Sorrento. To the left of the gate was a tiled image of Saint Anthony who is the patron saint of Sorrento.
Despite its name, Marina Grande is a small harbour and it didn’t take long to walk from one end to the other. Here are a few views from my stroll along the waterfront, and onto the docks, of Marina Grande. (The black and white images were displayed on the outside wall of a restaurant and are from the 1955 movie “Pane, Amore, E …” (the English title was “Scandal in Sorrento”), starring Sophia Loren, that was filmed here.)
Back up in Sorrento, I took one more photo looking down onto Marina Piccola where tomorrow morning I will say goodbye to serene Sorrento and take a ferry to the Isle of Capri. I feel reluctant to leave, perhaps because Sorrento is the legendary place of the sirens that called to Ulysses. But, the sea calls as well, so off I’ll go!
Alla Prossima! (Till next time).
A whole new flavour in your travels. Those Romans sure left their mark. Enjoy enjoy.
Hugs.