John and Bethenie: Sorrento

John's work schedule hasn't been the best here lately and he was having to work 6 days in a row and then have 3 days off, but by the time he slept for half a day coming off a night shift he only had 2 days off, so there wasn't ever enough time to really go anywhere. Well, his schedule finally changed this last week back to 4 days of work with 4 days off, so now we have 3 full days to go places, but this never really crossed our minds until after he woke up yesterday from his nap. We realized that we had until Monday to mess around and didn't plan anything, so last minute we decided we were going to try and maybe go up to Florence. Well, we both forgot it was Memorial Day weekend and there were no rooms available.

So we put plans to rest and when we woke up this morning tried thinking of what to do today. We through around a few ideas but couldn't decide what we wanted to do for sure, so we both took showers and got ready. By this time it was already getting close to noon and we had thought about going up to Vesuvius and hiking to the top, well of course it was John's first full day off and it was cloudy and raining, so we decided to go down to Sorrento and hope the weather was nicer there.

We were both kind of hesitant about going back down to Sorrento, when we were there last time it was in January, so middle of winter, and there was nothing going on. There were no people around at all and the town was pretty bare. A bunch of the shops were closed and all the restaurants were closed for the most part. But we always here about people loving Sorrento, and you hear of all the stars visiting down there so we decided we would try it again since we were going into summer. Well we got a completely different experience today. There were people everywhere and all the shops down all the alley's were open when items filling the streets, and all the restaurants were open with their tables all set up outside for dining. It was so much fun, I am so glad we decided to give it another try.

Looking out at the coast line

Looking down one of the cliffs

Gelato Break

There are mopeds everywhere around here, this was just one parking lot

Anyone want to relax and tan in the water? Yep those are floats all tied up so you don't go anywhere

On the way home from Sorrento marked the first time that I drove here in Italy and wasn't on base. It was a little scary at first getting used to the way they drive and trying to adapt to it, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I got a little nervous when we ran into traffic and cars started coming at me from all different directions but I made it through, and we made it to base with us and the vehicle all in one piece.

I was stopped in the middle of a traffic jam