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Arriving in Naples
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Our last day full day dawned as we arrived into the port of
Naples. Much maligned compared to Rome and neighbouring
Sorrento and the Amalfi coast it nevertheless oozes history, and looked fabulous in the early morning light as we docked.
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| Docked in Naples, with Vesuvius looming |
Our day started as we left the ship for a trip to Sorrento. Anne and I had a holiday in Sorrento in 2018, and our friends had been a couple of times, but we fancied going again as it'a s lovely town. It's a fair slog from Naples though, especially in a tour bus once you get to the Sorrento peninsula where there only narrow windy road through to the Amalfi coast can be quite challenging for any driver, let alone someone driving a large bus. In fact, this stretch of road epitomises the Italian way of driving, whether in a car, lorry, bus or throngs of mopeds and scooters, known locally as "mosquitos". Basically, they're all mad, and its a wonder there isn't an accident every 30 yards.
Anyway, we made it in a couple of hours which included a short "technical stop" (toilets) at a
Limoncello factory (that was handy!) where we were able to try various limoncellos including a grappa version - fire water! The journey passed quickly though due to the excellent tour guide we had assigned who gave us non stop commentary the whole way. Once in Sorrento, the time was ours for a couple of hours. We wandered the narrow streets, the ladies bought handbags, we too photos of the bay of Naples with
Vesuvius looming in centre shot. We stopped at cafe for a cold beer. We watched tourists.
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| When in Italy! |
Sorrento of course is known for its lemons, and they are everywhere. Real ones, fake ones, decorative ones, lemon this, lemon that and of course limoncello. Some of the lemons we say on sale were incredible. The ones in the photo below were almost football sized!
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| Selfie with the By a of Naples and Vesuvius |
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| Sorrento and Vesuvius |
Boarding the bus our next stop was the
Sorrentino vineyard on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where we tasted their particularly pleasant Lachryma Christi wines and enjoyed some Italian salami, bread and cheese. Lachryma Christi is basically the "tears of Christ" and the wine is so called because of the unusual grass which are shaped like tear drops as can be seen in the photo below.
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| Tear shaped grapes |
Just as we left the vineyard, the weather started closing in, and by the time we were back on board the rain had started with a massive thunderstorm obscuring Vesuvius and generating some massive lightning strikes. Glad we avoided that.
And so onto our final dinner on the Celebrity but not of course before pre dinner cocktails!
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| Pre dinner cocktails |
Dinner as always was fabulous. I didn't take many food photos (sorry), but this was my steak from our last dinner (I asked for it this rare), and it was melt in the mouth!
Our head waiter for most of the week was Jules, a Phillipino, who had looked after us superbly. The staff on the ship are to a person so polite, professional and genuinely dedicated to ensuring guests have a wonderful time. He made our dinner times extra special, and we're eternally grateful to him for that. His assistant waiter Charles, our sommelier Bonny and stateroom attendant Baso are also worthy of special mentions.
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| Jules, our Head Waiter |
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| Jules sans mask |
And that, brought us to our last sleep of the cruise. When we wake up tomorrow morning we'll be docked back in Civittavechia, and booked for an 8am disembarkation.
But we still have a tour of Rome up our sleeve before getting to the airport....
Twitter: @Statto1927
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/
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