3. Italia one last time

Roma, Sorrento, Capri, Positano, Roma

We couldn´t leave Europe without one more trip to Italy and with Bel´s 30th birthday celebrations taking place in Sorrento, timing couldn´t have been better! Rome was our entry point to Europe four and half years ago, and while we´ve been to Italy a number of times since then, we haven´t been back to Rome so it seemed fitting that it was also to be our last city in Europe.

Since it was our second visit to Rome, we walked around the city and main sights rather than visit them as such. However, last time we hadn´t made it into St Peter´s Basilica so we joined the 500+ queue and went in. Lisa was keen to catch the lift to the cupola but Dave pointed out that 550 steps was only 11 times the number at Bel and Andy´s place which we used to climb everyday so we hoofed it the whole way to some amazing views over the city.

For dinner, the owner of our accommodation gave us a highly positive restaurant recommendation but suggested we get there early to get a table. It seems 6:30pm was 1.5 hours before the restaurant even opened, so getting there early meant sitting around the corner in a great bar drinking fantastic Italian wine and people-watching at the local tabacchi (corner store) across the lane. Apparently lottery tickets and massive, multiple loaves of bread are the order of the day at 7pm on a Friday night. So back to the restaurant at no later than 8:08pm, 8 minutes after it opened, only to find the place packed out with not a spare table in sight! Oh well...

After a day and a half in Rome we went down to Sorrento to meet the gang (all 16 of us noisy Australians, Kiwi and English!). Bel had sorted out some fantastically located apartments, right on the harbour, and with relatively minimal stairs (less than a hundred!). We had a fantastic dinner on the harbour and a mini Ericsson graduate program reunion, complete with Kat´s voice who phoned in from the US to join the fun.

The next day we caught the ferry to Capri for some fun in the sun. Shepherding so many people around takes a little time but was well worth it for the bargaining power we had in hiring a couple of boats for the morning! We had a great time sunning ourselves and swimming in the green grotto - bring on April 2010 in the Whitsundays . We spent our last day on the Amalfi Coast on a day trip to Positano which is as beautiful as everyone says it is. AJ did a fine job at distracting Lisa from the 1 hour bus ride on the cliff road. We drove the main cliff road on our trip 4 years ago, but being in a massive bus on a road that´s really only safe enough for a Smart car does nothing for the nerves.
btw Laura - we found the "secret" beach but the water level was way to high for wading across - great swimming place though!

A few random thoughts

• Trastevere has a fantastic atmosphere at night and seems to have a family-run trattoria on every corner. We loved it so much we went back for dinner on our way back through Rome (and got into the restaurant this time!), despite staying on the otherside of the city.
  
• - There´s now an entry fee to the Forum! It made us feel quite old, "...back in our day, the entrance was
  
  Ubiquitous Italian scooters
  
  on this side, not around the corner and you could just walk straight through..." Definitely time to move back to Australia!
  
• - We were delighted to see that the Ape 50 model pick-up is still going strong in the country and transporting everything from ancient ruins to market produce, at it´s full throttle speed of 20 miles an hour
  
• - We forgot how steep those seaside towns can be - what with St Peter´s Basicila, Capri and Positano, training is well underway for those steep mountains on the Inca Trail.
  

---

---

---