Arrived in Sorrento

We arrived in Sorrento today and will stay for four nights, because there are so many sights to see on the Amalfi Coast.  While we like the "ambiance" of European hotels, we used our hotel points to book our final stay at the Hilton in Sorrento.  It sits on the hill with a great view, but also has awesome A/C and enough room for Mark to turn around in the shower, two things often missing in a "traditional" European hotel.

The drive in was as expected, if you know much about Sorrento (or the Napoli area), driving is a white knuckle experience.   Mopeds, bikes and cars everywhere.  Traffic signals are not seen as carrying much weight and missing someone by 4 inches is like missing them by a mile.  Fortunately, Mark's travels in Argentina and Brazil have trained him for this, but it was still a harrowing experience.  Not to worry, we and our car arrived without a scratch.  Mark's smile is a signal that the whimpering he hears from the passenger will soon come to an end.

Typical traffic for the 20 miles into Sorrento, bumper to bumper traffic, with mopeds going up the center and bikes on the outside.

After checking in to the hotel, we decided to hike to the top of the hill behind to the hotel.  We are doing a tour tomorrow and wanted to see where the meeting location was, so we treked up the hill.  12,000 steps and 100 flights of stairs later (according to the fit bit) we arrived.  I must admit, that was a little more than we expected when we set out, and we get do to it again tomorrow morning to meet our tour.

When we finally got to the top of the hill, we celebrated at the highly rated gelato shop.  It was named for the owners beloved cat, a statue of which is pictured below.  I am not sure, but the smoking may have been part of his demise....