Starting our Southern Italy roadtrip

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We drove out of Naples and made a stop at Herculaneum on the way to Sorrento. Herculaneum was a wealthy town, a popular seaside resort for rich Romans, destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, along with Pompeii. It is a much smaller site than Pompeii, not nearly as popular, situated in a valley by the sea and today surrounded by modern apartment blocks. It is better preserved than Pompeii because it was not destroyed by volcanic rocks. It was buried intact under hot ash and the buildings mostly survived. You can see the boat sheds where the remains of about 300 women and children were found. It is estimated that only 20 percent has been excavated. We also meant to visit Pompeii but Herculaneum was enough for us. It was very interesting, there was a lot to see and not many people.

We then moved onto a very comfortable Airbnb with parking in Sorrento for five days hiding out from the rain. Sorrento is OK as a base to visit other places but not very interesting in the rain and not too interesting for us when it stopped raining after 3 days either. The G20 were in town for four days and there was a lot of traffic and police. The road in and out of town was one big traffic jam. But after a few days inside we were getting really restless. It was still raining a bit but we decided to go somewhere anyway. We took a bus to Positano - instead of taking our gas-guzzling Ford jeep out - we ordered a small car! (thank you Avis). The bus dropped us at the top and we walked down the stairs to the village. Because of the weather there were very few people there and we got to see another side of Positano. I liked it much better than the previous time we visited when the little streets were packed with people. It started clearing up just before we left and the sun came out for the boat ride back to Sorrento.

The next day we had perfect weather and we decided to go to Capri - us and everybody else in Italy it seemed. It was so crowded. Long lines for the boat trips and transportation on the island. Capri really is lovely but the crowds of people did spoil it a bit for us. But I had a mission on Capri - to get up to the village of Anacapri for a visit to the house and gardens of the Villa San Michele. The villa belonged to Axel Munthe, a Swedish doctor, who first came to Capri when he was 17. He fell in love with Capri and after he became a doctor he spent the winters in Rome with his rich patients and in the summer used the money to build his house which he decorated with the remains of Roman palaces found on the grounds. You can read all about Axel Munthe in his book The Story of San Michele. We somehow got up there about an hour before everybody else. It was wonderful to have the gardens and views all to ourselves.

We spent our last day in Sorrento in town. A definite case of overkill. We just wandered around the village, visited the lemon grove, went down to the swimming platforms, visited the beautiful Chiostro de San Francesco, where there was a Scottish wedding taking place, and ate too much pizza and pasta.

The last time we visited the Amalfi Coast we stayed a few days in the lovely village of Amalfi but this time we wanted to go somewhere new. Salerno at the other end of the Amalfi coast looked interesting. It was still raining in Bari, so we set off for a few days in Salerno.

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[D MJ Binkley]

The joys of Italy
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