Limoncello Central

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I wonder if I'll be allowed into the restaurant for breakfast wearing shorts. Issy says that she‘ll pass on breakfast so I head off on my own. The waiters are all still wearing tuxedos, but there seem to be other people wearing shorts, so I relax a bit. There's a sign on the toaster saying that you're only allowed to put sliced bread into it. I wonder what other sort of bread anyone might contemplate trying to jam into a toaster. I'm pretty sure that a full loaf wouldn't fit. It‘s very quiet until the silence is broken by an American lady shouting "where can I get some coffee honey" across the room to one of the older waiters. I suspect he’s not all that accustomed to being addressed as "honey".

We head off to explore Sorrento. I passed a nice looking garden just around the corner yesterday when I was looking for the hotel, so we head into it. The entrance is via an archway which is part of a villa housing the Museo Correale di Terranova. It seems that the museum is the main attraction, and the garden‘s only a sideshow. It‘s on four levels and includes a wide range of exhibits including ancient Roman and Egyptian archaeological artefacts, 19th century furniture, and 17th and 18th century paintings and sculptures. The signage is all in Italian so we're not too sure exactly what we're looking at a lot of the time. The only signs that aren't in Italian say "Please do not touch" in English. I wonder if people who only speak English have a particular reputation for touching things that they're not supposed to. Some of the furniture is particularly spectacular, with lots of very fine and ornate detailing and inlaying. A lot of the artwork is very dark and in some cases it‘s difficult to pick out large figures hidden in the background. We‘re the only people here, and we’re followed from room to room by a lady whose job it must be to ensure that the "Please do not touch" signs are strictly adhered to. This feels a bit creepy. I wonder how she copes when it’s more crowded.

We walk through the garden, most of which which is a large citrus orchard, and then on through a tunnel before emerging onto a terrace at the top of a cliff overlooking the sea. It seems that this is part of the gardens of the very fancy Grand Hotel Ambasciatori. We stroll casually into the lobby. I'm not sure that we're supposed to be here. It looks like a playground for the very rich and famous, and it makes our fancy lodgings look like a backpackers' hostel. I wonder if they make you wear long pants for breakfast here. We casually say "bonjourno" to one of the guards and then manage to make it out onto the street without getting arrested.

We walk around the clifftop towards the town centre, and into the main square, Piazza Tasso. I stop to take a photo of the iconic sculpture in the middle of the square, which is of figures hanging off a column. Issy says she thought it was a dead tree. I hope none of the locals heard her say that. I'm not sure they'd appreciate their iconic statue being likened to a bit of dead wood.

The traffic in the square is chaotic. There are no lines to mark the traffic lanes, and cars, trucks, motorbikes, cyclists and pedestrians are all mixed in together, without there seeming to be any rules or logic. I tell Issy that we should do what all the other pedestrians seem to be doing and just stroll across the middle of the square at a steady pace while looking straight ahead. We reach the other side. We may well have come close to being mown down, but because we held our nerve and didn't glance sideways we‘ll never know, which is probably a good thing. There are restaurants all around the square, but no lines marking where the traffic stops and the restaurants begin. If we eat here I think that we should be sure to sit in the back row well away from the street. I wonder how many unsuspecting diners have been mown down while quietly enjoying a plate of spaghetti carbonara.

We stroll through the narrow alleyway of Via San Cesare, which appears to be the local version of tourism central. Most of the shops here sell the local brew, limoncello, which seems to come in an infinite variety of bottles including some with taps built into the sides of them. Its alcohol content is said to average 26%, but varies widely, and apparently the homemade varieties tend to be the most potent. Hmmm. I suspect a coma probably awaits anyone silly enough to scoff a bottle of this lot at a single sitting.

We head down towards the waterfront. The streets are all very narrow, and whilst most of them are supposedly two way, they’re usually less than two car widths wide. It seems that this is often the cause of conflict involving much passionate yelling and arm waving. A two carriage tourist train passes us and tries to go down a particularly narrow thoroughfare which is blocked by a parked car. The train driver and the car owner yell and wave their arms at each other. The passengers are getting impatient, but it seems clear that the owner of the car has no intention of moving his vehicle any time soon. The train driver does a U-turn in the alleyway. This is clearly impossible, but we just watched him do it… and we haven’t been drinking limoncello, well not that we can remember anyway.

We make our way down a steep, narrow and winding alleyway and emerge on the very attractive beachfront of Marina Grande. The sand is a dark yellow, and the narrow beach is packed with rented sunlounges and beach umbrellas. We try to walk between them but space is limited. They’ve tried to offset the lack of beach area here by building timber decks on artificial rock platforms just offshore. The cost of renting lounges and umbrellas on the decks is more than double the cost of renting them on the beach, which seems like quite a large premium to pay for the "privilege" of not getting sand on your feet.

We walk back up the hill to the cliff-front Convento di San Francesco, which is surrounded by an attractive garden and has a terrace overlooking the sea. The views from the terrace are spectacular. There‘s a wedding in progress in the Convent’s courtyard, and it sounds like the bride and groom are both from England. As we leave we watch another bridal party come in, also from England. I begin to wonder if there might be a shortage of wedding facilities in England, but on reflection we suspect the real reason is more likely a shortage of suitable weather.

We stop for lunch at a restaurant in Piazza Tasso. We remember what we saw of the traffic earlier, and choose a table a long way back from the street. We spend the afternoon siesta'ing.

Tonight we decide to head somewhere for dinner where you’re allowed to wear shorts. We settle on a small restaurant in a narrow alleyway in the middle of town. Our waiter is very smooth. He calls Issy "his angel". She thinks that he‘s got crush on her … well she did for about two minutes until she hears him use the same line on the girl at the next table. He tells us that he went to Australia twenty years ago, and then onto New Zealand. He said it was very quiet in Kiwi Land. He tells us that he went outside at six o'clock at night and the streets were all empty, which we suspect would be a massive culture shock coming from Sorrento; it's ten o'clock at night now and the streets are all crawling with people.

We finish our meals and order some limoncello. It comes out in tiny chilled glasses and tastes like lemon flavoured rocket fuel. A few more glasses of this and I suspect you‘d feel like you were in orbit…..

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Photos

Iconic statue, Piazzi Tasso
Issy thought it was a dead tree

The hotel lifts
They have mirrors on all the walls, and on the ceiling.