ITALY Sorrento | Day 1

We are back from our two week honeymoon in Italy! Our vacation was awesome, amazing and incredible.  I decided I would do recaps by day since I want to show you as many pictures as possible and its funner that way. Also - don't feel like you have to read the whole entry. I wrote a lot, in detail, mostly for myself to remember in 5, 10, and 20 years, but you are welcome to read it and/or just look at the pictures. Sit back, relax and enjoy!

Ciao, Kim

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A Slice of the Almafi Coast: Sorrento 

Top of the elevator at our hotel

The view from our room at Maison la Minervetta

When we first started toying around with the idea of going to Italy for our honeymoon, we met with Paolo at the Rick Steve’s travel center in Edmonds, WA to help us plan some possible itineraries. He mentioned that he didn’t like the Amalfi Coast very much so he didn’t recommend that we go there.  Since we are newbies to international travel, we said OK and continued to plan possible trips without including the Amalfi coast.  In the end, Paolo actually taught us a lot, but we ended up finding Katie from Ever After Honeymoons to plan our trip – and we absolutely loved every single minute of it. Jake and I both agreed that our favorite place out of the entire trip was the Amalfi Coast, so we are so glad that we made it the first stop during our visit.  

DAY 1 : It took 2 planes and three trains to get to our first destination.  We flew on Delta from Seattle to Detroit, then Detroit to Rome.  Next, we took the Leonardo Express train from Rome FCO airport to Rome Termini train station. I forgot to mention that our flight out of Detroit was delayed for 2.5 hours because they couldn’t get the temperature in the plane below 90 degrees.  Apparently it is Delta’s policy that they won’t load passengers until the temperature is below 90 degrees.  It was really HOT (98 degrees+) outside in Michigan that day.  So, we waited and waited and there was ultimately nothing they could do to get the temperature down.  They tried turning on the engines and running the A/C which helped for a little but once they turned it off, the temperature went right back to where it was when we started. After 2 hours of waiting, they decided that if passengers wanted to reschedule their flight, they could, but if we wanted to board, they promised it would cool down within 45 minutes once we got up in the air.  When we initially boarded, it didn’t feel too bad – it was definitely hotter than usual. It did end up being pretty miserable, but once we were in the air for an hour or so it cooled down!   As a result of our flight delay, we missed our train from Rome Termini to Naples.  So, we had to buy new train tickets (goodbye $100) so I was pretty sad about that. I wasn’t going to let it ruin my trip, though.  Once we got to Naples, we took the circumvesuviana (old, slow train with no bathrooms) to Sorrento.  That took about 1 hour and 15 minutes.  After a short taxi ride, we made it to our first (and favorite) hotel: Maison la Minervetta in Via Capo overlooking Sorrento and Mt Vesuvius.  Basically, if I designed a hotel, this would be it. The details were impecccable and just perfect. It is a boutique hotel with only 12 rooms but I literally felt like I was staying at someone's private villa. It was absolutely amazing and we compared every hotel we stayed at after to this one and nothing could measure up to it. We did love all our hotels but this was definitely our favorite!

We loved the decor, colors and theme of our room

Obsessed with the tile in our bathroom

Bed with view

At this point we had traveled for 4 hrs + 11.5 hrs (9 hr flight plus 2.5 hr delay) + 30 mins + 1 hr 10 mins + 1 hr 15 mins = almost 19 hours. We were exhausted, but our watches said it was about 4:30 pm, so we couldn’t go to sleep quite yet.  Italy is 9 hours ahead and neither of us slept much on the plane so we basically went a night without sleep.  We were both very excited for what was to come, but so tired too.   We took a short nap until our dinner reservations at Inn Buffalito at 7:30 pm.  I like eating dinner later {Italian style}, especially on vacation.   For an appetizer, we had a cheese and meat plate and for dinner we had fish and pasta. It was delicious! 

Appetizer of buffalo mozzarella and cured meats

Swordfish steak with zucchini

Spaghetti with plum sauce

We didn’t even drink any wine because we were tired and didn’t feel like it. We walked around the coastal town of Sorrento a little, then went home and crashed.

Main Square, Sorrento

We had to wake up very early the next morning to leave on the 7:45 am fast ferry to Capri.