After Budapest, we navigated our longest travel day yet: 2 trains over 11 hours, terminating in Venice. Venice was really cool but we only sojourned (what a good word) for 2 nights (1 full day), which won’t fill a full post so we’re including it here.

Venice Summary

When you’re in Venice, you can’t help but wonder: What madness drove people to settle in such an inconvenient location? The answer: Venice was settled by Roman citizens fleeing the Lombard hordes. They sought refuge on defensible marshy islands then, over the following centuries, turned those islands into the amazing city that is Venice.

As mentioned above, we only spent one day touring the main island of the city. The city is actually a collection of disjoint islands, connected only by ferries. Each of those islands, in turn, is a collection of smaller islands, connected by bridges. We found that 1 day was sufficient to cover the main island. If you go, we think you could fill 2 more days ferrying out to some of the other islands but most people would find the city monotonous after 3 days. A tip from our guide: Wood-fired ovens are illegal in Venice due to the tightly-packed wooden houses. Therefore, you should save your Pizza cravings for Naples and get something local to Venice instead.

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On to Sorrento

With our time in Venice at a close, we found ourselves on another long train ride, this time down the coast of Italy. First, we took a 5-hour, high-speed train to Naples followed by a 1-hour, local train to Sorrento. Honestly, Sorrento isn’t exciting, it has 1 pretty view, many touristy shops, and a modest selection of good restaurants. With that said, Sorrento is an excellent, inexpensive home base affording easy access to the surrounding area. From Sorrento, you can easily reach the stunning Amalfi Coast, historic Pompeii, and the cute Island of Capri, all sights we loved visiting.

Touring

The Path of the Gods, Amalfi Coast, and Positano

The Amalfi Coast is a picture-perfect, mountainous coastline bordering the Tyrrhenian Sea. Charming towns dot the coast, connected by a windy cliffside road, forging a chain of unparalleled manmade and natural beauty. Above the road, a clifftop hiking trail, The Path of the Gods, traverses between several of these seaside towns, affording marvelous views of the coast.

We hiked the entire 3-4 hour Path of the Gods, though shorter variations are possible. On the morning of our hike, we caught a train then a bus to Bomerano where our hike started. Despite a 1 hour delay on the train, we started plenty early, with the sun in the sky and anticipation in our eyes. We were continuously stunned by the beauty of this trail, from the moment we started, through our picnic, while in handstands, as we visited with other hikers, right up to the moment we finished in Positano. This hike easily ranks in the top 5 prettiest hikes we’ve ever done and it might even take first place.

Speaking of finishing the hike, the path ends way above Positano and you have to walk down 1700 steps to reach the town. That’s about as many steps as the entire empire state building. Our legs were sore for days!

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Pompeii

While planning our trains in Italy, Jackie was examining train schedules from Naples to Sorrento and noticed a stop named Pompeii. “Wait a minute”, she thought. “I remember thinking Pompeii sounded amazing in school. We should go there!” A quick search to confirm her suspicion and Pompeii turned into one of our day trips.

Pompeii is an exceptionally well preserved Roman port city. In 79 A.D., nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted, first engulfing the city in poisonous gas then burying it in 11 meters of ash. This one-two punch froze the city in time, halting people in their tracks and preserving everything, including bodies, bread, and buildings.

Romans interpreted the volcanic eruption as bad luck/godly disapproval so the empire left the city untouched, allowing its remains to fade into the mists of time until their rediscovery in 1748.

Since that rediscovery, two centuries of archeological efforts have revealed more and more of the city, exposing new insights into both Roman culture and the destructive eruption. Today, traversing the entire public area takes 20+ minutes. Despite centuries of excavations, work is still ongoing, with a large portion of the city still buried under 11 meters of ash. Progress is slow, of course, due to the painstaking efforts required to preserve artifacts as they are uncovered.

We booked a 2 hour guided tour followed by unlimited, personal exploration time and we’re glad we did. Pompeii is too large to see everything in a single day and, without a guide, the ruins lack context, they lack a story. Our guide filled in the context, presented the most important sights, then set us loose. We took the Pompeii: Guided Tour which was very good but impersonal. If you’re looking for a unique Pompeii experience, this is not it, but if you’re satisfied with the standard tour, this is a solid, inexpensive option.

All things considered, everything we learned was fascinating.

• Look at the stepping stones pictured below. The city does not have a sewer system which means the streets would have been full of feces. Denizens of the city avoided poop by walking on the sidewalks and crossing via the stepping stones. Imagine the smell. Yuck!
• Ammonia is an excellent laundry detergent and, in ancient times, the most accessible form was… urine. Yay. As a result, urine collection pots were scattered across the city. Launderer’s collected urine and used it to wash clothes. In case you’ve managed to clear your mind of the poop-filled streets, now image the smell of warm, bottled urine pervading the streets. Oh, don’t forget that your clothes were washed in other people’s pee. Gross.
• Approximately 70% of the cities population were slaves. Someone has to work hard so the rich can make art, democracy, and leisure, right?
• Much of the population was illiterate so, instead of street signs, they were guided by carvings on fountains. See the picture below.
• Ancient Romans were both brilliant enough to invent aqueducts but also unlucky enough to build those aqueducts with lead. Oops.
• Finally, life expectancy barely broke 40 years old thanks to sanitization challenges, disease, and lead poisoning. We think we’ll stick with modern life, thanks.

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Capri

Capri is a cute, touristy, shopping/vacation island accessible via a quick 20-minute ferry from Sorrento. The island is popular with celebrities, so it’s good for “sightings” if that’s your thing.

We’re not into shopping or celebrity worship but we are into pretty hikes, which Capri is overflowing with, so we put together a quick day trip filled with island wandering. On the day of our trip, we caught a sea sickening ferry out to the island, recovered from the ride, then hiked to several viewpoints across the island. After finding a quiet, pretty view we stopped for a picnic before taking in a few more viewpoints and eventually catching a calmer ferry back to the mainland.

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Observations

The Land of Carbs

We thought we ate an excess of bread/carbs in France but Italy taught us the true meaning of carb loading. Sorrento/Amalfi cater to tourists and what do tourists want in Italy? Delicious Italian food, of course. Pastries for breakfast, pizza for lunch, gelato as a snack, then finish your day off with a nice bowl of pasta. After a few days reveling in all the delicious food, we were feeling a bit ill and found ourselves searching for a restaurant with veggies. Sadly, our search was fruitless (literally, ha!) so we conceded defeat and loaded up on veggies at the grocery store instead.

Olfactory Fatigue

As we learned about ancient cities, we remarked that it’s clear why we evolved olfactory fatigue. Can you imagine living in a city where the streets flow with poop and urine is fermenting in collection bottles? We can’t. Now imagine doing that without olfactory fatigue. *shudders*

Time

Nothing is on time in Sorrento. Trains and buses are always 10 to 20 minutes late. Restaurants don’t really open until a few minutes after their posted opening time. Tours leave 10 minutes after scheduled. Once you realize the pattern, it’s easy to adjust, but the contrast to other European cities is notable, especially Germany, where everything is impeccably on time.

Overall

Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast provided the perfect mixture of beautiful hiking, fascinating history, and recovery time that we needed. We recommend the area to all types of travelers as there’s a bit of something for everyone, from shopping to hiking or beaches to history, all tastes can be satisfied. We stayed 5 days but power travelers could hit the highlights in 3 while immersive travelers could spend weeks. We’re recovered and excited for Rome where we expect to find lots of ancient history, eat more delicious Italian food, and maybe even find a restaurant that serves vegetables.

Bonus Pics

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