Our afternoon in Sorrento was relaxed. Hugh and I took an easy
stroll around the town, which whilst small, still had a lot to offer.
We were enchanted by the public access
lemon and orange grove off the main street. It had a quiet serenity that I
don't think we had found so far on our trip. The traffic and people outside
melted away almost instantly once we walked through the gate.
A look out on the cliff edge showed
pristine blue oceans, and so we took a steep set of stairs that wound under the
cliffs down to the Marina area. Despite the water temperatures being freezing,
I still dipped my toes into the water. I had an almost compulsive need to
experience what water of such azure colour would feel like wrapping itself
about my skin. Hugh and I both agreed that this was a place we would love to
return to again in spring or summer.
The marina area was a draw for the local
feline life (probably from the fishy smell), with cats milling about and even
sitting boldly on parked cars. It was a nice area to explore...until we
realised we had to get back up the steep cliff face.
The stairs that we took back up brang us
out in the centre of town, right near the Valley of the Mills. The Valley of
the Mills was hidden in plain sight, buried in a valley below where the Viale
Enrico Caruso met the Via Fuorimura. If you didn’t bother to look past the
road, you wouldn’t even know it was there.
In the valley was the remains of an old mill, overgrown with
vegetation. Nature was taking it back with force.
The explorer in me was absolutely itching to find a way down. I
could see that there was definitely a way down – a narrow ramp ran down the cliff side.
The ramp access ran under the road to where a car park sat – and was blocked
off. There was no doubt why - the ramp looked very dangerous, and the valley
was so far below that a slight trip of the feet would mean death.
We sat for a good 20 minutes to half an hour just gazing down in
the Valley until the heights started to make me feel a little nauseous. I had
pressed my legs hard against the fencing to trick my mind into feeling
grounded. Logic said to me that if I could feel the fence against my body, I wasn’t
falling.
A street behind our hotel was the cloister of St. Francis, a
picturesque courtyard in the St. Frances monastery. We had the courtyard to
ourselves, so we stopped for a while to admire the beauty of a hidden spot of
nature that was tucked within four man-made walls.
Not too far to the east was what seemed to be the main tourist
shopping drag. Here, we embarked on a taste journey, stopping in various shops
to try Limoncello (a strongly acidic alcoholic drink that was a specialty of
Sorrento), lemon flavoured lollies and biscuits, orange rinds dipped in
chocolate, a creamy lemon spread (which I bought a pot of to take home), coffee beans, and more. No surprise that I found
my Sorrento fridge magnet here.
By the time we had bought small samples of the local produce it
had gotten quite late. It was about 7pm at night, and my stomach was telling me
it was food time. We chose a restaurant perched on the edge of the ‘Via Luigi
De Maio’, a deep street that wound down the side of Sorrento to the Marina
below. I had a lasagne and Hugh got a swordfish meal with olive and tomato.
After dinner we took a small walk before returning to our hotel.
We were quite shocked when we saw a woman casually walking her pet wolf (yes,
wolf!) down the road. I wish I had snapped a picture because it was such an
absurd thing to see, but I was so shocked that someone was walking a wolf that
all I could do was open-mouthed in disbelief. Hugh pointed out as it passed that
it had a hungry look in its eyes, and I was vaguely happy that at least it was
muzzled. There was also a super jealous part of me that instantly want to move
to Italy, because as a child my dream pet was a wolf.
 |
| NB: Not the actual wolf, just the type of wolf. The image comes from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10572271/Italian-farmers-fight-back-against-wolves.html |
No comments:
Post a Comment