Sorrento; Friday, 30 September, 2011

The internet managed to conspire to make me have a very bad feeling about the flight as I set off to head to the airport. Whilst check-in has supposedly opened at 1pm the previous day, it had taken until 8am before the online system worked, and then it indicated that the flight was indefinitely delayed. Though, when I dropped my bags at the airport the lady at the desk was unaware of any delay, but did think the plane may have been swapped and was starting at Gatwick rather than coming in from somewhere else.

The flight was very smooth, with an almost cloudless sky across Europe there were stunning views and we followed the Seine from the coast and past Paris, then down over Lake Geneva and the Swiss Alps before flying down the West coast of Italy and the final approach into Naples.

Unfortunately, we’d been battling with a headwind the whole way down, and by the time we landed we were 15 minutes late. In spite of a really quick journey through immigration and baggage reclaim, it still meant I missed the bus to Sorrento by a matter of minutes. So I had to wander over to the café in front of the airport terminal building and have a very slow cup of coffee in the 90 minutes I had to wait.

The bus left on time, straight into the Friday evening Neapolitan traffic so it was a pretty slow journey for much of the way down, though once beyond the sprawl of modern Naples the views over the coast were stunning. However, by the time the bus finally arrived 20 minutes late into Sorrento it was already dark, so I didn’t get to see much of the final descent down into the town.

I walked the short distance from the bus station to the apartment I had rented, checked in and then headed out for a short wander around the town.

I stopped in the main central square and was in time to get one of the last land train tours of the evening around the city centre and down to the port.

After completing the tour I popped into a nearby restaurant for a late dinner, before finishing off with a walk back to the apartment, stopping off at the park near the complex that overlooks the bay.