Ahhh, what sweet sweet bliss it is to sleep in! My God it was lovely! We didn’t wake up until close to 11am! And I loved every second that I snoozed. After breakfast we got in our bathing suits and coverups, snagged our new Amalfi beach towels and our sunscreen and started the walk to the “beach.”
It was another scorcher of a day, and the heat and hills were starting to get to mom. When we got to the top of the main hill our apartment is on, we had to walk down to the area that has the steep slopes all the way down the cliff side to where the beaches are below. It took maybe 20-30 minutes total, but we both looked like we had already gone swimming thanks to the heat, sunscreen, and sweat.
At the bottom, there are “beach resorts” that look like long piers out into the water, where you pay for a sun-bed or sun chair, with or without a mattress, and then you have a designated space on the pier.. you walk to the steps and swim out into the water from there, never being able to touch the sea floor. There are waiters to bring you food and drinks and then you can also pay for towels and umbrellas. The sun beds have sun visors attached to shield your face if you so choose. Pretty neat!
However, at first, we didn’t know about this. In between these “resorts” there are free beach spots, with small sandy stretches of beach and you walk into the water like normal. We walked down to a couple of these, and people were already packed in on their towels, so close that people had to have their knees bent-they literally didn’t have the room to stretch all the way out! Plus, because of the cliff jutting straight up directly behind the beaches, the sand was all in the shade already.
We ended up walking back to the resort place we first saw when we walked up. I asked for 2 sun beds. The man said they only had chairs. I said never mind, mom was getting irritated and he heard her say, “alright, let’s just go back to our marina beach, this is too much..” and the man told us to wait a minute and he’d try to find us sunbeds.
Within a couple minutes, he was ushering us past several other people waiting to our sun beds on the back part of the pier-in perfect view of the sun! It was glorious! We got settled and then quickly went to get into the water. It was the most perfect, refreshing temperature, without being too hot or too cold. We swam and laid out in the sun.. I drank Prosecco and read my book on my kindle (The Paper Palace, by the way..).. it was awesome.
I realized I lost service on the pier after I was messaging with Juan and Caro about meeting up on the beach area and getting lunch together. Here I thought I was telling them where we were and when we wanted to eat, and nothing had actually sent. Whoops. I got hit with messages when we were walking up the steps of the cliff around 4:45.. I felt so bad for missing them!
We had to hustle home and shower, to get ready for nose swabs and dinner. We made it to the pharmacy at a minute before 6pm, had our tests done by 6:15 and told to come back in 20 minutes to get the results and our travel paperwork. We went next door and had a drink at a cafe, to cool off some, then went back and got our negative results. During that 20 ish minutes, I was googling our apartment and other hotels in the area, just in case one of us was positive and we couldn’t fly to Malta tomorrow..
Thankfully that wasn’t the case-although mom and I both agree that Sorrento is our favorite location so far! After we had our paperwork tucked away, we walked to the lemon tree restaurant. We waited in line, and as we got closer and closer to the hostess, the views of the place just got prettier and prettier. When it was our turn, I was fully expecting a “we have no tables” from the man, but instead he told us to wait to the side. Less than 5 minutes later, we were sitting at a table with gorgeous lemon trees and a garden of flowers behind mom. It was stunning!
I ordered wine and seafood risotto, I know-I have a problem.. it’s just so flipping good! The seafood was shrimp and clams, and y’all-I don’t actually like clams-plus I had to pluck them out of their little shells, but it was actually really good and not too chewy. Mom got lasagna.. I asked our waiter if it was customary to put eggs and peas in the lasagna, and he told us it’s a Sorrento tradition, the boiled egg anyway, not the peas.. so her lasagna had an egg in it-but it was actually really good! She just picked the egg out.
After dinner we walked through the garden area of the restaurant taking pictures and being silly. We’d offer to take pictures of couples we saw trying to get decent selfies, too. It was so fun and so many laughs. From the garden we wondered the tiny roads for the last time, knowing we’d be leaving for Malta in the morning.. making sure to love every minute. We found a little shop selling purses and mom and I both found one we had to have-so ridiculous, but when in Sorrento!
On the way back towards the room, fireworks were going off! We watched the show from the top of the cliffs beside the pretty hotel we walk past everyday. When they were over, we carried on to the apartment. We poured glasses of wine to celebrate our last night here (not that mom drank more than a sip), and as I was about done pouring, more fireworks started from our marina!
We sipped our wine while watching on the terrace! It was the perfect ending to our time in Sorrento. I literally couldn’t have asked for it to have been any better, even with the terrible meal thrown in the mix. I truly think I’ll have to come back and spend more time here some day. Ah, I’m actually really sad to leave.