Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns III: Sorrento

(A momentary departure from Orcas Island life, continued from Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns II: Rome Arrival…)

At about this time – our first morning in Rome, headed for Sorrento – it dawned on me that I was in no pain. For two years, I’ve had zapping pain down the back of my leg, so I’ve avoided all activities that cause it – sitting in general, sitting in normal chairs, bike-riding, squatting, and bending over.

Knowing I’d have to sit on two planes for a total of 12 hours in order to fly to Europe, I imagined that I’d have a lengthy zapping experience. In church here on Orcas, I had asked for prayer for my upcoming surgery, scheduled for September 8th (today). I was feeling really scared about it, knowing it would be oh so close to my spinal cord. An acquaintance at church, Rob, came up and suggested that I try acupuncture. I told him that I’ve tried everything, but he nudged me to try again. He had a near-disabling back issue many years ago, and acupuncture saved him.

I listened. The person that immediately came to mind was Dr. Vincent Shu, a local doctor who lives his life helping others heal in the most natural ways possible. His lifetime of experience in cardiology and other areas of medicine inform his Eastern and Western integrative approach when it comes to acupuncture, nutrition, etc. I had a feeling that if there’s anyone I hadn’t tried yet who could potentially make a difference, it would be Vincent.

I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much, especially since I had been really proactive with all kinds of therapies to no avail. But now, carting luggage around Rome headed toward the train station, I was in disbelief. Was I feeling nothing due to adrenaline? Or the stress of COVID testing and the elation of it finally “counting”? Or was I perhaps out of sorts due to time zones and jet lag? No. It couldn’t be those. No matter what life was like, the sciatic pain I experienced had always seemed to zap through any circumstance and make itself boldly known.

Not wanting to celebrate too quickly in case it decided to rear its ugly head an hour or a day later, I giddily acknowledged the unique state of painlessness but held on for what could possibly unfold again.

We boarded our first Italian regional train, headed to Naples. It was surprisingly smooth, cool, and well-spaced for distancing. It was so enjoyable to sit down and be so comfortably whisked away.

When booking trains from my kitchen table back home, I noticed that every other seat was blocked off so that trains could only fill to half capacity for COVID reasons. I booked two of our longest train journeys in advance, knowing we could lose the money if our trip didn’t work out, but I noticed spaces in the economy sections were filling fast. I could either book nonrefundable tickets ahead of time or risk economy seats filling altogether and have to buy much more expensive seats on the same trains.

We watched the scenery whoosh by and after a little while, Mt Vesuvius (of ill-fated Pompeii) was always in the distance outside one of our windows.

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After arriving in Naples, we headed over to a different section of the train station to board an intercity train for the final 30 miles – a well-used, graffiti-covered thing that was not reservable – whoever got on, got on. It wasn’t too tight after a few stops let out some bodies.

Up to this point, we noticed everyone wore masks compliantly. Remember when Italy was hit hard at the beginning of COVID’s spread? Italians locked themselves inside their apartments and sang corporate songs together from their individual balconies each evening. I’ll never forget those scenes on the news. They learned from their tragedies. They mask indoors without any apparent contention or rebellion. It’s just a given to keep each other safe. How refreshing.

In no time, we were in Sorrento, walking through the center of town to find our AirBnB.

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This is the main thoroughfare, at least from what we experienced. It’s not even a mile long, striated by narrow little streets not wide enough for large cars that pull people down into a tiny little tourist fantasyland of restaurants, shops, and gelato stands on bumpy tiles and cobblestones. It’s so quaint and cute, nothing like the massive expanse of Rome.

It’s also very yellow.

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The big thing here is lemons – lemon granitas, lemon soaps, lemon towels, lemon dresses, lemon fabrics, and Sorrento’s famous lemon liqueur, limoncello. It’s sold in small and large bottles in almost every store.

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This is where we had our first real taste of Italy – orange and lemon granitas from a shop vendor on the street. It was so hot and humid, we were so tired from walking through labyrinthine streets with luggage, and we had just been let in our apartment. We set down our luggage, took a little tour of the place with the host, and set off on the streets again to quench our thirst.

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That was probably the best memory of a drink in my life!

My husband had a hankering for an authentic Italian sandwich after seeing various shops with glass-fronted deli cases full of marinated peppers, eggplant strips, and onions. He beelined into a shop chock full of olive jars and hanging meats. The kind owner helped us stumble through poorly pronounced phrases in Italian, like “no meat, just vegetables, please,” and filled a gigantic flute of artisan bread with buffalo mozzarella and vegetables soaked in wonderful juices. The rest of us held out for other meal items we might happen upon.

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We noted early on that benches, bathrooms, and garbage cans are not common sights in many Italian towns.

Once you get to the ends of these Sorrento streets, you reach a dramatic cliff overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The mention of a sea is about the point that I’d need to see a map if I were reading this. Below is the map of Italy I put in my Notes app from the very beginning. Go south of Rome and you see Naples. See that “little” bay below Naples and above Capri? That’s the Gulf of Naples. The little teeny piece of land that juts out westward below that bay is where Sorrento is located.

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Let’s look a little closer now, at another map that guided us through our experiences in my Notes. See Sorrento there to the left?

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Here’s the view overlooking that bay, the Bay of Naples.

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Sorrento and its fanciest hotels hover over the Tyrrhenian Sea, and you can’t believe what you’re seeing. You wonder how man-made structures will fare over time, built atop constantly eroding cliff faces.

You also realize what maps don’t show – you can’t just saunter down to the beach in Sorrento. Maybe paraglide. Thankfully, there are walkways built into the rock.

Here’s how we first got down. Near the beginning of the little touristy area, there is a cut in the cliff to allow for roads, and there’s a steep cliffside stairway that gets you down to that bottom road.

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This leads you to beaches you must pay to use, whether you’re swimming or sunning yourself.

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Walk back up a different cliffside ramp, and you’ll see those beaches from above, with Mt Vesuvius in the distance.

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Stunning, isn’t it? As hot as we were, we opted not to pay to swim. We’d be headed to some towns on the Amalfi Coast over the next several days where we hoped to take a dip. At this point, we had walked a lot, sweated a ton, eaten very little, resisted the jet lag, and pushed our kids past every limit. Pretty photos sometimes don’t capture the reality that you’re telling your kids to pose over scenic vistas in between their wanting to collapse of exhaustion.

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Our kids are used to being physically pushed. As jaw-dropping as the environment looked around us, it was time to give them a break and head back to the AirBnB – a white, immaculate, spacious, cool respite for refueling.

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You wouldn’t know it from looking at it, but this AirBnB is right in the heart of those narrow, touristy little streets, three flights up an apartment building that looks fairly rough on the outside.

It’s amazing what some air conditioning and water can do to revive exhausted, depleted systems. Within minutes, the kids were wide-eyed and perky again, though ready to put their feet up for a bit.

By the way, I’m trying my best to exclude gobs of family photos. I don’t want you to feel like you’re sitting on my couch and I’m forcing the family albums on you. I’ll sprinkle these posts with my people when it helps to have humans dotting the landscape, but I won’t overdo it!

Now, while my kids are grabbing a bottle of cold water from the fridge and resting for a few minutes on the couch, let’s go back to this map…

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You see those towns from Positano to Vietri sul Mare? I had researched those idyllic, oft-photographed towns endlessly back home at my kitchen table and decided that Sorrento would be our home base for exploring the Amalfi Coast. We would take day trips to one or several towns each day, depending on what the landscape was like.

From the way this looks, you might assume you can just hop on any mode of public transportation in Sorrento to reach those places dotting the coast. Well, kind of. What these maps don’t communicate is that Sorrento is on a cliff, as you’ve seen, and each of those towns is situated at the base of other mountainous cliffs on the southern side of that piece of land. You can’t quite imagine it until you’re there. I had visited blog after traveling blog, reading my way through the region, but you can only research for so many hours and days. What I had ascertained though, is that you have two choices: take a fairly pricey two-hour ferry that gives you a sweeping look at the Amalfi Coast, dropping you off at the town of your choice; or take an incredibly inexpensive two-hour public-transportation bus along hair-raisingly steep cliffs to the town of Amalfi, where you can catch another bus to a town farther along the coast.

My husband had decided early on that this trip shouldn’t be all about scrimping at every turn; that we should do and see things we might never again experience. He suggested that we opt for the ferry and see this famous coastline from the water. I booked it online for the following morning, inserted the corresponding QR codes in my Notes app, and out we went on the evening Sorrento streets.

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The next morning dawned and we slowly arose for a new day and the exploration of a fabled coastline.

Steps: 18,917 (~ 8 miles)

Miles from Rome to Sorrento, via Naples: 170

Next stop: Amalfi…

P.S. I’m headed to my second acupuncture appointment with Dr. Shu in an hour. Thanks to his expertise, I never felt sciatic pain (or any back pain) on our three-week trip. We walked for hours, sat for hours, hiked mountain roads, swam in the sea, lugged luggage on cobblestone streets, and not one twinge of pain darted through my nervous system. I postponed my surgery for early December, but I’m hoping that a series of acupuncture appointments might continue to heal my back over time and keep me from needing surgery altogether. I highly advise seeing him. Here is his information.

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns I: The Planning

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns II: Rome Arrival

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns IV: Amalfi to Ravello

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns V: Minori to Maiori

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns VI: The Isle of Capri

Walking Italy’s Scenic Towns VII: Capri’s Marina Piccola

I just happened upon the coolest YouTube video walking series. If you’d like to walk the streets of Sorrento for a few hours to soak up the sights and sounds – no narration, only captions with historical facts – it’s a fantastic way to do it. It literally feels like YOU are walking around seeing it all, and it encapsulates the same kind of experience we had plus additional footage of places we didn’t see. Here it is.