Europe Day 15 - Sorrento, Italy

Saturday, 23 August, 2008

From Pompeii, we set off towards Sorrento for our beach-front hotel.

you know they're deprived of beaches when you see them playing on these rocks. fun meh?!


You see mount vesuvius EVERYWHERE





After a lot of wrong turns we managed to find our hotel.. Mar Alimuri. It had the best sunset views!

Unfortunately.. the hotel manager was there to greet us at the lobby, and apparently there were no rooms for us, because he says the fax machine was broken or some shit. I really believed him but now on hindsight after reading some travel articles on Frommer's, I realize that this is a trick used by the hotel industry to earn... Downgrading you to a lousier hotel when you reach.

He claimed that it was a mistake in the first place, that the hotel's rooms wouldn't have been at that rate (which does make sense because it was quite a nice hotel plus seaview from room but I paid only abt 120 euros) .. But he was helpful and he did have some suggestions for us, e.g. some shit apartment that he claims was his own room which we rejected.. He offered a dinner at his hotel on the house, after which he would get another hotel for us.

We were quite tired after all that driving/getting lost, so we wanted to wash up somewhere first. After finding out that we wanted to go to Capri the next day.. he suggested the Atlantic Palace hotel in Sorrento. (Mar Alimuri is actually in 'Meta Di Sorrento' which is pretty far from the harbour) We didn't have much of a choice, so we followed his suggestion.. He called the boss there and personally drove there (we followed his car in our own), and handed us over to the staff over there..

It wasn't too bad an arrangement, considering

1. This new hotel is nearer and has a free shuttle to and fro from the harbour to Capri island
2. We still scored a free dinner complete with wine (save some money and still eat good food)
3. It's 4 stars
   

Just that we didn't manage to fully enjoy that beautiful sunset in Mar Alimuri hotel and there was that unpleasant hassle of negotiating with that boss..

The room at Atlantic Palace.. Pretty good, they had the same colored walls as my own room at home =D

Our complimentary dinner, actually our best meal in Italy. And the only one at which we had free WATER and wine.


friendly waiter who posed for me





night view from our balcony




and... mount vesuvius, again

Europe Day 15 - Pompeii, Italy

Saturday, 23 August, 2008

When I learnt that Pompeii was in Italy, I quickly checked to see if it was possible for us to drop by. Because it's one of the things I can actually remember from my Geography textbook. So today we leave Rome for Pompeii.

Fontana Del Tritone, still in Rome near our hotel


We walked towards the railway station, Stazione Termini and on the way we had a simple breakfast. Coke seems cheaper than water so that's what we had.

Our A160.. This was, the cheapest auto car I could get. Most of the cars here are manual. We opted for auto because we're gonna be driving on cliffs and slopes so.. safety comes first!

This is the road next to Stazione Termini. When we tried to return our car that we drove from Venice the other day, we couldn't find the place to return it and kept going round, onto this road. So we met that Kungfu Panda poster many times.

Going South, towards Napoli!


Bought this from the Dolomiti supermarket. Tasted okay.. I didn't manage to finish the whole packet before it melted into a messy goo.


Could that be Mount Vesuvius?


We stopped by this quiet little city which looks like Malaysia for lunch.




Had a crazy time trying to communicate with the owners about what we wanted. We wanted to try something really local. It tasted o-k, there were not enough ingredients for my liking and we suspect they totally overcharged us.


Well, after filling our tummies, we reached Pompeii with the help of chingyuh's gps.


There weren't enough english speaking tourists to form a English tour =( so we had to get audio guides.

Like the Colosseum, we can only imagine how the place could have looked like before the nasty eruptions of Mount Vesuvius buried the whole city. It is also quite irritating that most of the artifacts have been moved to the Archaeological Museum of Naples. Pompeii was rich with art pieces, mosaics and portraits so it was a pity that we didn't have the time to drop by the museum.

These are the famous plaster casts that we saw in our textbooks.. The decomposed bodies left holes in the ashes left by the volcano, and archaeologists poured plaster into these holes to cast the original shapes of these Pompeiani. We can see that they hardly had time to escape and their bodies are contorted in pain. Even their facial expressions were captured and this guy is gritting his teeth.

Baths. I was more interested in the many dogs which came in here to escape from the heat. They all lay motionless and I was quite afraid that they could be dead.




This was where they sold cooked food


A famous canine mosaic


Colorful walls



another beautiful mosaic


You know that you're near the whorehouse when you see such phallic symbols on the walls


Were they so short?


This is the Lupanare, or the brothel. Also the most crowded place in Pompeii.



There were erotic art displayed, it is not sure if these are advertisements or some kind of menu for you to choose from.



at the Forum, with Mount Vesuvius in the background





lemonade ice