For the second half of our travel in Italy, we head further south from Naples, to make Sorrento our base. Another ferry ride, another hour and a half of gazing at the serene brilliant blue water of the Bay of Naples, only broken by the wake of the ferry’s engine. Then we arrive at Sorrento’s marina.
Our hotel is advertised as being a mere 1 km from the marina. No problem we think, the inveterate walkers that we are. Soon it becomes clear though that this is a daunting task, that will strain our sinews in a Sisyphian push of our luggage up a narrow cobbled street climbing to the heights of where the central part of Sorrento is. This is where the fellowship of travelers makes it appearance. This is something that we rarely experience in practice, as we are too cautious in offering help or taking the help of strangers. But as we are huffing and puffing with our luggage pushing it up and trying to stay away from the path of cars sharing the road, a family going the same way steps forward helpfully. They clearly know to pack light and so they take some pieces of luggage off our hands and start pushing them up in a linear chain of travelers, all climbing toward the city center.
The Serpentine Stairways of Sorrento
We believe we are making good progress toward the hotel till an impenetrable problem, in the form of a stairway, stares at us in the face. We come to a stairway, which may as well be the mythical stairway to heaven, as we cannot see its top. This is where our friendly fellow tourists bid us adieu, hand us back our luggage pieces, and disappear up the stairway. The Rock, or any other suitably hulky hero, would not have dared to lug up the heavy luggage that we had up that stairway to heaven. And we are no Rocks. So we stand there by the roadside, at the bottom of the stairway, peering at taxis coming along the road in the hope that one of them will be empty. No luck. So I go up the stairway, leaving the rest of my family with all the luggage promising with a flourish that I will return with a rescue squad. And when I have reached a vertigo-inducing height, I spot the bustling city center with the blessed sight of a taxi stand. There is my rescue squad in the form of a portly Italian taxi driver, to whom I somehow communicate where we have to go on our rescue mission.
Sorrento it turns out is a city built for tourists. Walking its bustling, narrow streets (cobbled of course, following the dictum that European touristic cities must follow), I hear American English, and more American English, and some British English, and some Spanish, but no Italian. Fellow Americans have made their way to Sorrento by the droves. And they are having the time of their lives imbibing the Sorrento limoncello and wolfing down the Sorrento gelato. The gelato is refreshing during our treks through the hot Italian summer and even S. who keeps me in check by counting calories and sugar relents. Plus the gelato is supposed to be less calorific than ice cream … but you throw caution and calorie counting into the wind and see it fly away when you are touring Italy. Come to think of it, I do that when I am touring any place at all for that matter. When life gives Sorrentoans lemons, they know to make great things out of it, so much so that it is now known the world over for its lemon-infused dishes and drinks. Limoncello is an alcoholic drink, with good measure of vodka in it. But it is such a staple in Sorrento that when we are offered it as aperitifs before our dinner, our son is offered a shot as well, proof of age requirements floating away in Sorrento bonhomie. We get to pick a Sorrento lemon from a tree in our hotel compound. It looks different, larger and with a more elongated shape. I have my heart set on bringing it home as a travel memento. Till S. reminds me of the beagles at Chicago airport who do not smell kindly any produce being brought back into the country. So reluctantly I leave the Sorrento lemon, and my dream of making a limoncello back home, in Sorrento.
Amused and Amazed at Amalfi
From Sorrento, our target is to visit some cities along the Amalfi Coast. This is a much-talked about playground of the uber rich with stunning vistas of both seas and mountains nestled in close proximity. Commoners can also feast on these stunning vistas as they look upon in wonderment at the super yachts of the super wealthy off in the waters. We take a bus from Sorrento to the town of Amalfi. The bus goes along narrow, serpentine roads, the edges being a mere inches away from the long drop to the waters. I try to avert looking at the edges. I am a little abashed at my queasiness as I see many two-wheelers, the famed Italian scooters driving merrily along on these curvy roads. They look so puny in front of our SITA (the bus company) bus. The drivers and the passengers on these scooters wave at the bus merrily and seem to be going along these roads in a utilitarian way, oblivious to the beauty and to the danger close by.
Amalfi turns out to be hot and crowded, to be expected considering that its city center is small and everyone we had mentioned southern Italy to and who had some world traveler vibes around them, had suggested we must visit Amalfi. So while it made sense that there would be this crush of tourists, still it felt oppressive. And then we found refuge in a cathedral, as many in more dire circumstances have done over the years at churches and cathedrals. This was the Cathedral of St. Andrew the Apostle, overlooking the city center. You climb a hundred odd stairs and when you cross the ticket booth, you escape into relative quiet and the bliss of AC. Saint Andrew, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus, has his remains here. The building traces its origins to the 9th and the 10th centuries and this feeling of history stands in juxtaposition to the noisy, blessedly welcome ACs stationed at various spots throughout the cathedral. The crypt deep in the hollows of the cathedral is dark, slightly ominous, and perfectly temperature and humidity controlled, all without the aid of modern ACs.
Lording it over the Amalfi Coast
We are vain about stepping off the beaten path. And so we decide to leave Amalfi behind and go to a village away from the coast and high up in the hills called Ravello. This it turns out is a half hour’s bus ride away, along even narrower and steeper roads. This is clearly a place off even Lonely Planet’s radar and so the infrastructure has not had to be built up for volumes of tourists. This time the EAV bus has complete dominion over the roads, with no cars or scooters daring to make the trip by themselves on these roads with gravity-defying turns.
Ravello turns out to be every bit the picturesque, forgotten village, stuck in time. Incongruously, as we are walking the streets of Ravello — we do not have to look out for cars as they are banished from most parts of the village — we hear refrains of Bollywood Hindi music wafting faintly from who knows where. My curiosity perks up and we follow the strains like auditory detectives to a villa with a small chapel in it. It turns out that there is an engagement ceremony in progress where the bride is of Indian origin. We peek inside and catch glimpses of what is clearly a high-end, classy affair. I wonder if I could go in and pass off as a distant relative of the bride. But then I look at my casual dress, showing signs of the steep hikes I have been on, and realize it would not come off well against the immaculately dressed and coiffed participants at the reception.
The anticipation for the bus to take us back from Ravello to Amalfi turns from simple waiting at the bus station to a little unnerving feeling of being stranded. The EAV bus schedule printed at the stop is inscrutable and two supposedly scheduled buses do not appear. We are contemplating that we have ways to go to get back to our hotel in Sorrento and just as we are resigned to scrounging for a place to stay the night at Ravello, the EAV bus blessedly appears on the horizon. We ride the bus in contemplative silence, just the three of us and the driver, at once separated by a language and united by the spirit of the helpful human. We are trying to figure out if this is the right bus, which would take us to Amalfi and that too in time for us to catch the bus back to Sorrento, or deposit us in an even more forlorn village. The driver stops the bus en route to “converse” with us — there is little danger of us obstructing another vehicle on these empty roads — and after some creative gesticulation and pointing to phone screens, we are reassured that this bus will take us to our intended destination. So we reach Amalfi in due course, a few minutes before the bus to Sorrento is to leave. I frantically look around for the man in the fluorescent yellow vest, like a stranded mariner looking out for a flame from a lighthouse. Because that man in the fluorescent vest, we have been told, is our ticket to well, a ticket to the bus.
The ride back from Amalfi to Sorrento I am part awake and part in a dream as it is a dark night and the rolling of the bus is a lullaby. Though not a very soothing one, as the bus takes its hairpin bends in this inky black night. I convince myself that there is an angel up above that looks after tourists who venture out on these unknown roads in darkness, trusting themselves to an unknown someone, the driver. The bus is surprisingly full even at this late hour and I soon realize from the American English all around that these are Americans like us drawn by the rapturous praise of the Amalfi Coast. The bus stops at several stops en route disgorging tourists, Positano being a busy stop on the way. My angel does her job well and we reach Sorrento unscathed.
Returning through Time and Space
Our trip is coming to a close. We head back from Sorrento to Rome the next day. There is an anachronistic train called the Campania Express that takes us from Sorrento to Naples. It is anachronistic in that when the train arrives, a gaggle of personnel from the train company, EAV, lead us tourists to the train in a Pied Piper-isque procession and motion for us to get in. The train has multiple compartments but only one door through which you can enter. And then during the hour and 15 minutes of the train ride, these train employees stand guard at the entrance fending off folks who try to board the train at the various intermediate stops, such as Pompeii. It turns out that the Campania Express is an exalted train, only for those who have had the wisdom to buy a ticket to it as opposed to the generic Sorrento-Naples train. We do a quick changeover at Naples from one station to another and are on our way to Rome. An hour and a half later, we have arrived in Rome, a train station full of urban energy, and literally many miles away and figuratively light years away from the touristic backwaters of Ravello where we had been less than 24 hours earlier.
Next day, the plane journey from ancient Rome to ancient-by-US-standards Boston takes us across the Atlantic and across the 2,383 years that separate their foundings. Our days of being delightfully lost in southern Italy are done.
Distant Whispers from an Academic Engineer's World 