Sorrento to Asissi

On Friday Morning, we got up early and some of us took an optional tour along the Amalfi Coast to Posettano. It’s really spectacular with its lemon orchards (grown for the liqueur limoncello), olive groves and tiny villages clinging to the limestone hills (mountains to us I think), which run right down to the very blue ocean, so it is just amazing. I’m sorry to say it leaves the Great Ocean Road and The Firth of Thames (NZ) miles behind for beauty. We saw the 3 islands which were formally owned by Rudolf Nureyoff before he died and are believed to be where the sirens lured mariners to their death before Ulysses’ beat them at their game.


At 10 am we picked the rest of them up and continued our trip around the bay of Naples to Pompeii where we spent an amazing couple of hours at the ruins. I’d never thought I needed to visit it, but will remember it as one of the highlights of the tour. Our local guide Lailo certainly helped to make it very entertaining too.
Pompeii


We finished our drive around the bay (having seen Vesuvius from every angle now) and headed to Assisi where we were to spend the night. It’s a fairly small medieval walled town and the second most visited city after Rome as far as religious pilgrimages go. People visit the Basilica as it contains the bones of St Francis (the patron saint of animals amongst other things).It’s a beautiful, unspoiled place and I have never seen so many priests, friars, nuns or religious souvenirs in one place.
Assisi


A big group of us sat and had drinks in a quaint little bar next to our hotel. It had wrought iron furniture, sitting on cobblestones on a hill so all our drinks kept sliding across the tables. We had to watch them carefully or drink them fast! A glass of wine was only 1 Euro which is the cheapest we have paid.

One of our hotels waiters had to come down and call us for dinner (which was a good and generous one of pasta followed by pork with forest mushrooms and finished with panna cotta and berries.