Day 12 - Visiting Sorrento

When we planned our trip, we had originally planned for this day to be spent driving to Vesuvius and Pompeii but, after yesterday's long drive, we decided we wanted to stay a little closer so decided to head out and explore Sorrento.

Sorrento is an ancient city, though very few ruins remain, and is a prime tourist attraction due to it's port, history of Limoncello production and beautiful cliff-side hotels. Once again, we found a great parking garage and off we went with no agenda whatsoever. We dinked around town and decided to make our way down the cliff for a drink at one of the restaurants out on the many piers. We shared a bottle of wine and enjoyed the beautiful views and cool breezes off the Med.

Guess what? Yup, we were hungry and decided to make our way back up the cliff to find a restaurant somewhere for a little pasta. We found a great little place along a narrow walkway that was being serenaded by a trio with a young woman belting out Italian favorites. More wine, some food and we were good! After lunch, we explored a bit more, took some pictures, bought some gifts and made our way back to the hotel. Sorrento gave me, far and away, the most exciting driving experience of the entire trip. People everywhere darting in front of you, cars, buses, scooters all going everywhere all at once. At one point, we were driving up this narrow road and a Mercedes was coming down. My right mirror was about 2 inches from a cement wall so I couldn't go over any more and he was as far over as he could get. As we passed, our mirrors kissed and I looked at Guido and simply said, "oops" and away we went! No damage, no foul!

On our way back to the hotel, we noticed that the brewery, Birrificio Sorrento, was open so we stopped, went in and introduced ourselves. We met one of the owners, Giuseppe, as he was busy cleaning with one of his staff. His English wasn't very good but he understood that I was a beer snob and truly disliked the most popular Italian beer, Peroni, but was really interested in his beer. He agreed wholeheartedly and I think he said something to the effect that he thought Peroni was Italian pisswater. Ok, language barrier surmounted! Unfortunately, it was just a working brewery rather than a brewpub so they didn't have any beer to sample but I ended up buying a sample bottle each of the three styles they make as well as a t-shirt and a couple glasses as momentoes. Very nice guy and I really hope he is able to get his beer exported to the US.

Once back at the hotel, we relaxed a bit, drank some beer, played around at the pool and watched an amazing sunset, drank more beer then went and got cleaned up for dinner. We stopped by the bar on our way to dinner (surprise, surprise!) for a shot of Jager and ended up chatting with the bartenders and sampling a host of other liqueurs as well as having them pour us one of the beers we bought. Dinner was amazing, just as on our first night in the hotel, and was a great end to our stay at the Relais Blu as we needed to check out in the morning.

Check out the waterspout in the distance!!!

Ciao!!