Len Russ in Europe - Rome to Sorrento

Woke up early and packed my bags for our 3 days of Greek Island sailing only to realise that we still had a stopover in Sorrento. Oh well you get that. We said good bye to some more people who were staying behind and headed off to our next stop – the city of pompei. I was partly excited after talking to our tour guide a few nights ago in florence about how cool it was to walk in around the ruins.

We arrived in pompei around lunch time and was it hot! We met our pompei tour guide who’s name I can’t recall but never the less he seemd less bothered by the heat than ourselves and he wore a pink shirt. I think the last time a guy pulled off wearing a pink t-shirt and not coming out gay was chevy chase in ‘national lampoons national vacation. And that was about as exciting as it got.

We walked up and down little square plots of brick walls that didn’t really resemble anything but apparently they were either a brothel, or a store or a brothel. The highlight was going through a brothel which still had pictures of what position you could order. I was expecting to see people or even mock ups of people that were standing in the street frozen with terror at the sight of the volcano about to barbeque them. Nope anything half decent was in a museum miles away. In my opinion pompei was a bust but then again if you went in say, june or july, it may not be as warm.

We all sat around waiting for the bus and ate our lunch packs prepared earlier. The sun had done wonders for the gnochi as it was a little soggier. I still ate mine regardless and chased it down with a ice cold slushi from around the corner. The bus turned up and we headed off to Sorrento. The roads and traffic on the way were pretty crazy and moosh did an awesome job of navigating the tight bends on the cliffs as we crossed the moutains leading down to Sorrento. He even put the bus on the line to stop and allow us to take photos of the awesome views of the Bay of Naples.

We arrived at our campsite later that afternoon and after setting up camp, everyone headed to the pool. It was strange as all the locals seemed to be spending the holidays here rather than going away. We seemed like the only western group in the pool area. A few beers and a few laps later we left to go and shower and prepare for dinner. After dinner I polished off a couple of beers while waiting for the night to cool down so I could sleep in my tent without sweating a rainforrest.