Sorrento and the Sorrentine Peninsula have a history that predates the Romans by more than a thousand years. Sorrento and the other small towns in Campania were thriving Greek colonies when Rome was still a swampy backwater. The influence of the ancient Greeks runs deep in Sorrento and with a little sleuthing, you can still find their fingerprints. In fact, the original Greek gates to the city are down in the Marina and they sit unmarked and unnoticed by the hundreds of thousands of visitors who walk past them every year. Those stone ramparts were there when Odysseus sailed past them a thousand years before Christ. Quiet realizations like that abound in Sorrento and indeed the entire region. Just when I thought I couldn't handle one more limoncello stand I'd get poked in the eye by something that threw the whole place back into historical perspective.

Sorrento does have its charms and it is a lovely town for walking. I have a tendency to get up pretty early when I'm traveling and one of the coolest things I can think of is to walk around a place I've never been as the sun's coming up. Places let down their hair after hours and Sorrento at 6am is a walker's paradise.

The main drag is lined with some pretty bad restaurants selling bad food to tourists who are too stupid to know it and too timid to try something different. Ugh. Just behind the pizza (bad pizza, not the good stuff) and burger stands are real restaurants that serve authentic, local cuisine. It's worth it to find them. I ate my share of lousy and quick lunches in Sorrento yet one of the best meals I've ever eaten in a restaurant was at Caruso in Sorrento. The night my friends and I went to Caruso, I announced loudly and clearly that dinner that night would be on me. This was before I saw the menu. Caruso is also the place where I spent more on a meal than I ever dreamed was possible. Hey, it's just money. Right? Despite the formality of the dining room, the staff at Caruso took care of my friends and I in true Italian style. So far as I can figure it, that style is a pride in their hard work but it's leavened with a genuine concern that I liked my dinner. We got up from the dinner table three hours after we sat down and I was a happy man indeed, despite the sticker shock. I felt like I'd been cared for for the previous three hours, not just fed. Any restaurant anywhere that can pull that off deserves every euro they charge.

So when I go back to Campania I doubt I'll stay in Sorrento again. However, if you're considering a first-time trip to that part of the world, I cannot think of a better place to stay. Our villa was idyllic, I cannot recommend the Villa Terrazza strongly enough. But once you get a feel for the region, digging deeper and retreating to a small town in the mountains or along the sea at a point farther south seems like a better idea. Well it does to me anyhow.

Here are a couple of shots from my early morning walks in Sorrento. They're not in any kind of order, there just photos I like from that trip. 

As always, there's more of my travel musings on my regular blog, Kitchen and Residential Design. When I'm not blogging about kitchen design that is.

I love lavender and it grows all over southern Europe. It smells better in Italy than anywhere else though.

This is the courtyard of the Sedile Dominova, and it's now a men's club. Those frescoes are authentic 14^th century works of art. It's easy to forget that perspective had been lost with the fall of Rome and remained all but forgotten until the 14^th century. When this trompe l'oeil was painted, it would have been both retro and high tech to the people who saw it when it was new. Pretty cool.

Here's another shot of the Sedile Dominova.

An early morning street scene in Sorrento. Italian opera makes perfect sense when you walk around the place where it originated.

This is the Piazza San Francesco in Sorrento.

Looking across the same piazza from another perspective.

This is the driveway of the Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, Sorrento's resident five-star.