Finally, a decent night’s sleep… sort of.
They put a “roll away” bed in the room for me next to the king bed mom and dad slept in. The mattress was SUPER comfy, but the bed frame was made of wooden slats held to a metal frame by plastic end cups that weren’t, shall we say, new. So any time I increased pressure unevenly on a single slat from things like, oh, rolling over, said slat popped out and I had to lift the mattress and maneuver the slat back into place.
Eventually I gave up and put the mattress on the floor.
Still slept well, though.
Super tasty continental breakfast with bacon that was 80% fat and 100% awesome.
We loaded up the car and headed out, opting to take a quick detour along the Sorrento peninsula, because we could.
On the way, we got our first glimpse of Mount Vesuvius.
Mount Vesuvius – Photo by Dad
It shocked my system with some sort of instinctual excitement. I couldn’t tell if it was some sort of genetic fight or flight response, or just my reaction to years and years of hearing about it… but either way, it was awesome in the most basic sense of the word. It inspired awe.
Sorrento was crazy beautiful. There’s not really much more to say than that.
Sorrento from Above – A few more photos in the Gallery below.
It was Sunday afternoon, so the place was packed with traffic and insanity. We also had a car obviously filled with luggage. So rather than park and wander, we just let the magic phone map lady take us on a tour of the city before heading south towards Calabria.
The drive down was long, and filled with rest stops. We ended up stopping at more than one because I couldn’t deal with the combination of crowd and not knowing what side of the car the gas tank was on. But eventually we got gas, and continued on our way.
One thing that was surprisingly like home was the number of wildfires in the hills. Lush, green, tree-covered hillsides with 1 to n-1 pillars of smoke rising from below. Some of the fires were tiny. Some, however, were huge. And it was a huge one that trapped us at the mouth of a tunnel for about 20 minutes while they put it out. When we finally got to proceed, there were several fire trucks there, and it was still burning. We could hear the crackle even with the windows rolled up.
Despite the delay, we made it to Localita Bracè.
“Where dat?” you say? Lemme explain. No. Explain will take too long. Lemme sum up.
This is Italy.
Look down at the toe of the boot.
This is Calabria.
Now look at the knuckle on the toe of the boot.
Here is Briatico, right at the top of the knuckle.
Right next to Briatico is Localita Bracè.
Localita Bracè – Our house is the little grey pin.
And that’s where we’re at.
Sunset last night was amazing. We just sort of basked in it for a while before heading out for food. Dinner generally doesn’t start till about 8:00 here. Around 8:45 we arrived in Vibo Marina, a little town about six miles east of us… it’s like someone took Sausalito, got rid of all the snotty rich people, and made it actually fun.
Dinner at Ciro’s
We dined at Ciro’s Pizze, a nice little family style restaurant where they served pizze and hamburgers, Italian style, which is pretty damned good if I do say so myself. That was followed up by gelato from The Sun (oh yes, I’ve eaten food from The Sun), and a nice walk along the marina before heading home for some much needed sleep.
Gelato from The Sun.
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