Well, our honeymoon is beginning to wind down. In preparation for our flight home we began the trek northward today, and spent about 5.5 hours driving north from our beloved little resort hotel of Il Nido in Sorrento back to Florence.

Here is a short video from the rooftop parking lot…

View of Sorrento from Il Nedo Hotel:

Before we left we took a couple more photos of the view from our hotel room…

Last view from our balcony

And from the parking lot on the roof…

The view our car had

Then one more of Vesuvius as we drove past it…

Bye bye Vesuvius

The area around Sorrento was so beautiful it was hard to leave. On the way out I held our video camera on the dashboard to film the drive across the mountainous peninsula out to the mainland. Gary will try to make this video available later to give our friends a little taste of what it’s like to drive in Italy.

Throughout the drive we were treated to a series of castles on the tippy top peak of passing mountains. Every now and then we managed to get a good shot of one…

One of many castles on hilltops

But in general we got a “teaser” view from far away, and then by the time we were close enough they seemed to do everything in their power to block the view of the castle from the highway, like this…

Missed it by this much

For the first time on this trip we arrived at a hotel that told us they didn’t have a room for us. To make things really hairy we lost our internet connection, and our only means of finding a hotel (short of wandering randomly looking for hotel signs) was unavailable. So we drove back to the hotel that had no room and sweet-talked the girl into giving us the address of another hotel, which she did, which we found, and which had a room for a reasonable rate.

Before dinner (the Italians don’t even begin to THINK about having dinner until 7:00 pm), we went for a walk to stretch our legs. We came across a little central park area and found several elderly people sitting on park benches. One of the women got up and walked toward us speaking in desperate-sounding Italian. “non capisco,” I told her to let her know that I didn’t understand, and we kept walking. But we were both really disturbed by the scene. She didn’t look like a homeless beggar (and we’ve seen a few of those), but something was obviously very wrong. After a few minutes we turned around and I gathered a few Euro in my hand to give to her if that was in fact what she needed. As we approached she came walking back to us again speaking in very distressed Italian. I told her, “Non capisco. Io non parlo Italiani. Io Americano.” She pointed to herself and said, “Italiano,” and I replied, “Englese. Io parlo Englese.” then I asked her, “Money? Euro? Do you need Euro?” She grabbed my hand and squeezed it, pointed to a closed up building and moaned, “Italiano.” and said some other things in Italian I didn’t understand. Then she turned away. She didn’t seem to want my money, she needed something, and unfortunately there wasn’t a thing I could do for her.

We’ve seen a few things here that have tugged at our heartstrings. Some homeless people. Plenty of stray dogs and cats. Lots of abandoned buildings. Lots of migrant workers trying to eek out a living selling their wares on the sidewalk. The touristy places are raking in money, and the highways are well tended from the large tolls they collect. But a lot of this country seems to be barely scraping by. Hopefully we’ve done our part to boost the economy a little.

When we first got here we had the naïve illusion that we could hide the fact that we were American tourists. Ha! What a laugh! It turns out we’ve had a neon sign on us this entire trip reading “American tourists here!” Even when I walk up to a hotel desk to ask for a room and say, “Bona sera. Camera per due, per favore?” They respond, “For one night?” So it’s obvious we speak English. They’ve all been polite and helpful, and even in situations where the other person spoke essentially no English we’ve been able to make ourselves understood. It’s been an adventure!