Sorrento - Marina Grande, Lemons, and Gelati

We drove through Naples on our way to Sorrento. If some of you have ever been through Naples you know its rough. I'm sure there are some pretty areas to the city but its just not a place I have ever wanted to visit. The farthest south previously I have been in Italy is Pompeii and we took a train from Rome. Even the train was a little scary going through Naples. Naples apparently is Italy's most polluted and crime-ridden city. After we got through Naples we drove through a few smaller towns. I was starting to worry if we had made a mistake going to Sorrento because it all just seemed dirty and grimy to me. I had wanted to stay in Pasitano but it was so expensive and I could not find a place that had a family room for a decent price. So Sorrento it was! When we finally figured out where our hotel was and how we got into the parking lot we started to relax, and the view from our hotel and room were AMAZING! 

The view driving into Sorrento

Sorrento is wedged under the mountain (on a ledge) over the Mediterranean Sea. You see lemon and olive groves everywhere over the landscape. Sorrento is a resort town and during the summer months has more visitors then it does residents. We first decided to walk down to the Marina Grande so that we could get some dinner. We had all just been snacking in the car during the car ride and we needed a decent meal. 

Mary grotto on the side of the road

A little waterfall right next to the road

Walking from the hotel down to the Marina Grande below

Our hotel is on the top and we ate dinner down here on the water.
This area is like a small little fishing village. 

If you like Lemons...this is where you come. LEMON EVERYTHING!

Lemons were being sold everywhere you look

Check out the size of those Lemons..some were as big as grapefruit.  

Many different flavors of Limoncello! Yummy!

Lemons were all over the Italian pottery

Lemon trees

Statue of St. Anthony the Abbot who is Sorrento's patron saint. He faces
north to greet people from Naples. 

Piazza Tasso is the main area that is very lively, noisy, and congested. There are many shops
and restaurants here that looked very nice. We walked around here for awhile and
went into some shops. 

This is Via San Cesareo which was a touristy pedestrian-only shopping street that leads back to Piazza Tasso. Many of these buildings had huge ancient doorways next to a tiny door - to let the right people in, carefully, during dangerous times. 

This was the front window at the Gelateria Primavera. It was all made out of chocolate and cookies. We got gelati here and had to wait in line for awhile because it literally went out the door. Its a famous place that has 70 flavors and even makes pastries for Pope Benedict XVI (you can see his picture in the back). 

The view from our hotel room! 

I had read somewhere that Sorrento's name may have come from the Greek word for "siren," the legendary half-bird, half-woman who sang a lullaby. According to Homer, the sirens lives on an island near here. No one had ever sailed by the sirens without hearing the lullaby....and eventually died. But Homer's hero Ulysses was determined to hear the song. He put wax in his ears and set out to sea. The sirens, thinking they had lost their powers, threw themselves into the sea, and the place became safe to inhabit. Ulysses' Odyssey was all about the westward expansion of Greek culture, and to the ancient Greeks, places like Sorrento were the wild, wild west. I thought that was interesting!