Today Yaz and I slept in late in an effort to acclimatise ourselves to the Italian time zone (Seeing as we're still in the Antiguan time zone which is a 6 hour difference). We woke, had breakfast and set out to explore Sorrento and to buy some clothes for Yaz as Alitalia has lost her bag.
We went to an amazing ice cream shop called Primavera which had walls plastered with photographs of famous people, parties, record attempts and all sorts of occasions. Yaz and I had Mojito Sorbet, Katie had Kinder Bueno ice cream and mum had Pistachio flavour. They tasted amazing but they melted far faster that we had expected and all of us got very sticky! You should have seen us four standing in the shade licking ice cream quicker than Usain Bolt can run a hundred meters!
After wiping ourselves down and recovering from the ice cream sprint we continued on through Sorrento checking out the local scenery and shops along the way. Yaz and Katie were particularly unsatisfied by the shopping as everything seemed to be wither very expensive and designer or plain crap touristy stuff. In the heat of the day we got out of the town centre and headed for the coastal bars.
Sorrento is built on the edge of cliff faces and as a result it is much higher than sea level, despite being a coastal town. There is a mixture of hair-pin roads and footpaths cut into the rock faces, providing a route to access the harbours and 'beaches'. The 'beahces' don't quite seem like beaches at all as they're completely man-made and commercialised. I presume that due to the geography of this place, it being built on cliff edges, there was no beaches with sand and space to swim. So at some stage the local Italians here must have positioned huge boulders off the shoreline to create sheltered coves, they connect the boulders using piers and smother the small sand strips and piers with sun beds and deck chairs.
Most have small restaurants and cafe's and are gated so that you can only enter via the manned entrance. Rates for using the 'beaches' are around €8 - €12 per person but include the use of a deck chair or sun bed and of course their particular section of cordoned off Mediterranean water. Extra is charged for parasols.
We later hiked back up the steep cliff edge walkways to the town where we meandered along alleyway like roads browsing the shops. I loved seeing small boutique like hideaways with hundreds of different olive oils and ceilings overcrowded by hanging chillies and sun dried tomatoes.
In the evening we cooked, ate and joined our Irish relatives in their adjacent hotel, The Bristol, for drinks overlooking the stunning Sorrento scenery.
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