We only had a morning left, so we spent it seeing Sorrento by daylight - we've usually got up and gone somewhere in the morning, returned at 5 or 6 to rest, and only wandered the streets of Sorrento in the evening.
The main square of Sorrento is called Piazza Tasso, after the famous poet Torquato Tasso who was born in Sorrento in 1544. Mind you, he didn't live there much, he moved about a lot, between Naples, Urbino, Rome, Padua and Venice, and seems to have spent most of his life in Ferrara. His statue is in a corner of the square.
It's rather difficult to photograph, because it is heavily shaded by several large trees.
The main street of Sorrento, the Corso d'Italia, is largely built on a sort of flat shelf at the top of the cliffs. The hillside rises again on the side of the Corso opposite the sea. The width of the shelf varies on the side of the Corso facing the sea, but eventually the cliff falls steeply away to the marina, port and beach. We explored a few of the streets on the seaward side of the Corso d'Italia near our hotel to see if we could get any sea views, but there were precious few. Most sea views have been taken by expensive hotels. However, we did stop to appreciate the large area of orange and lemon trees, all with large fruit, though it was all still quite green.
The Piazza Tasso, the main square in the middle of the Corso, sits astride a huge chasm in the cliffs.
You may be able to see, in the bottom left of the photo, some of the stairs you have to climb down to get to the port. Perhaps you can appreciate why I wasn't keen to climb all that way up again when we returned from the trip to Capri.
On the edge of the Piazza is the Duomo, the main cathedral. It is in the Baroque style, though much of it is modern reproduction. I'm not sure about the ceiling.
It certainly looks old.
We walked from the Piazza Tasso towards the public gardens that fringe the cliffs, and found this rather attractive little cloister with a small garden at the centre; Paul would have stayed there all morning, it was cool and shady and empty of people.
However, we pressed on into the public gardens, which were full of red and white roses. Yes, roses in October. The gardens end at a lookout platform, where you can admire the beautiful Bay of Naples, with Vesuvius in the background.
There were three cruise ships in - one is outside my picture - as well as the four-masted schooner you may be able to see just to the right of the white cruise ship.
All too soon it was time to return to our hotel and collect our baggage ready for our trip to the airport. As we walked back, we passed a portico we had only seen before in the dark, so we had not noticed the wonderful trompe l'oeil paintings.
It used to a meeting place for the government in the 18th century, and had subsequently been taken over by the commune and dedicated to the use of the ordinary people of the town. You can see one of them reading his newspaper at a table.
We had a quick lunch while we waited for our bus, and then were soon on our way to the airport. Although it's only a two and a half hour flight, it seemed to take us the rest of the day to get home, where we finally arrived at around 9 o'clock at night. As soon as I arrived in Gatwick, I had to swap my sandals for shoes and socks and put on warmer trousers and a fleece. It was a bit of a contrast to the 24 C warmth in Sorrento!
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