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| Sorrento is in mountainous country along the coast of southern Italy |
| Glenn's Positano Journals 5-15-02, Part 2 We arrived at the train station, grabbed our luggage, which we had left at a "left luggage" place for 5 Euros, and boarded the very packed train to Napoli. Once we had passed the first few stops the train almost emptied and there were plenty of seats to be had. We relaxed on the 4 hour ride while we mostly read our books. Dave, Marile, Erin, and I shared a compartment for the ride. Once we arrived in Napoli we quickly checked out the next available Circumvesuviana train to Sorrento. We found the next train leaving within 15 minutes, bought tickets, and scurried our way to the correct binario (platform). At this time of night (6:40 pm) the Circumvesuviana train was extremely packed with people heading home for the day. We ended up standing for the whole ride out to Sorrento, which took about an hour and included over 25 stops along the way. Once in Sorrento our first order of business was to find a place to stay for the night. It was already 8:00 pm and that is usually a little late to get into town and still find decent accomodations. We walked into town looking for information (The bigger cities have an information booth at the train station, the smaller towns only have information in town) and passed a few hotels along the way. We were always trusting our Lonely Planet guide and Dave and Marile had the Let's Go guide so we had multiple options of places with reasonable accomodations to choose from, if they were not already full. (The Lonely Planet guide has become our "bible" to traveling through Italy. Others recommend Let's Go for European countries and we have not heard much good about any other guide books to date, at least for budget travelers like ourselves.) We found a place in town that offered a quad for 95 Euro's but I was insistent on checking out a few other options. While they were checking out the hotel I ran into the town center to check on information, which had closed at 7:00 pm, and since it was already after 8:00 pm, we were out of luck. We wandered up the hill to check out the Hostel only to find another place, Pensione Linda, that was listed in our books. We checked it out and for 50 Euros per double room with shared bath, and the fact that it had been a long day, we opted to stay here. It worked out well as we were on the 5th floor (they had an elevator) with only 3 rooms total on the floor, in which we were using the 2 rooms at opposite ends of the hall. To end the evening we found a restaurant that, again, was recommended in our guide books, and had a fantastic dinner for a good price. It was now after 11:00 pm and every one was pretty tired so we headed back to the room and crashed for the evening. Tomorrow we were heading to Positano. |