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Standby travel to Sorrento and the Amalfi coast

Pati

10+ Posts
My sister is a flight attendant so I was her buddy pass, and it saves lots of money if you can get on the flights you desire. Big IF! We started out at O'Hare in Chicago intending to take a 10am to New York and then Rome from there. We saw right away that this and the next flight were full, so I realized that I had points on Southwest, booked a flight to Newark, raced across the city, parked, and made the flight from Midway. Now what? She clicks away on her laptop and gets us "listed" on a flight to Milan that leaves at 6:50pm. We arrive at Newark, find our way to the international terminal, she checks to make sure there are still seats available and we go to the agent to get our boarding passes. Her's prints, mine doesn't because it's just barely less than one hour before boarding. Like two minutes! Insert bad word. Begging does not help as the computer doesn't respond to begging. Wait, my ever clever sister says, all we have to do is get you through security and then they'll give you a boarding pass at the gate, because that's when "non revs" get their passes. So she lists me on a flight to Zurich which leaves later, the kiosk spits out my boarding pass, I go through security, she cancels that flight and we head to the Milan gate. Phew!!! They gave us wonderful seats in the coach area, but with more leg room. Couldn't sleep however after all that turmoil, so watched a couple good movies.

From Milan station we bought tickets to the main terminal and then bought business class tickets to Naples where we met my nephew, who's taking a semester in Rome. I really enjoyed the train and would think about traveling that way between cities again. We picked up Patrick and found the Circumvesuviana train, (outside and down) and waited only 19 minutes for the next one.

Finally we get to lovely Sorrento (thank you Pauline for suggesting this as a base) after 30 hours of traveling and decide to walk our luggage over because we had been told that it was close to the station. It wasn't, but the apartment was just as pictured in the Tripadvisor ad. I would have loved to have one of the gorgeous villas over the sea that I've seen on this site, but budget and new knees determined something more realistic. It was very roomy for a European stay however. We decided to give Patrick the master with his own bathroom, and we took the the twins with our own bathroom. The owner came, collected the cleaning fee, put it through on my credit card, then took the $200 and said that it didn't go through, but it actually did. When I found that on my charges later, he apologized and said that he would deal with it with his bank. I'm still waiting, because I really don't want to give him a bad review.

He suggested a restaurant around the corner which turned out to be perfect, very fun, good food and so close. They were already full when we walked up, but we walked another half block to a British pub, had a drink and came back. Even though we were on the east side of the city, I found that I liked being part of a neighborhood. For the rest of the week we would tuck our heads in to both places and have a drink or buy some cheese and found that they recognized and welcomed us like we were old friends each time. The name of the restaurant is La Cantinaccia del Popolo, the pub is called Split.

I'm hoping that I can figure out how to continue this at a different time and add pictures.
 
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Hi Pati! I put in some spaces to make it easier to read. To add more, do a Post Reply in this thread. For photos, click Upload a File, navigate to photo and it is uploaded. Then click insert full size. Don't worry if they are not in the right place or if they show up as thimbnails, I will fix them.
 
Thank you Pauline. Sorrento turned out to be the perfect base for us to travel the whole Sorrento and Amalfi coasts. Sorrento was easy for me to explore on foot, do some light shopping, have lunch in Piazza Tasso and just take in the incredible views of Mount Vesuvius. We loved exploring some of the tiny streets and alleyways. Because we had an apartment with a kitchen, I was able to buy some wonderful food from the small groceries. Very inexpensive lunches and snacks, and of course, wine.

From the Marina Piccolo we took the high speed boat to Capri. I started out inside on a seat, but it was too claustrophobic for me, so my sister and nephew lured me outside to stand with other brave souls and watch the beautiful shoreline views speed by. Capri was extremely touristy, with one shop after another. But I love scarves, both for myself and for gifts, and this was definitely the place to find them. There was also an abundance of limoncello and lemon products. We had a light lunch at one of the shoreline restaurants and my salad was dressed with lemon olive oil. It was delicious so I purchased some in the attached store. My father's family is from southern Italy, so growing up, our salads were always dressed with olive oil and lemon instead of vinegar. I have kept up the tradition.

We decided not to take the Blue Grotto tour as I had read negative things about the shortness of the tour, the demand for tips, etc. We had thought October would be less of a busy time in this area, but we were definite wrong. Hoards of tourists, us among them.

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