Leaving Sorrento (part three)

Our final day in Southern Italy dawned bright and beautiful again. After the evening's rainstorms, the sky was clear and the views were fantastic. It was also much cooler, thankfully, as we had laundry to do! Today's plan was pretty simple: get some laundry done and enjoy Sorrento while doing it. After breakfast, we loaded up the necessary laundry and walked about half a mile up the road to the laundry place our Australian friends told us about. Americans: be grateful for your coin laundry places!!! This was pretty much the same idea, but there were three washer and three dryers (hey, kinda like my laundry room at home) but it cost us about 8 euro per load... that's a hell of a lot more than a dollar to wash and a dollar to dry, my friends! While here, somehow not surprisingly, we met someone from the area where my aunt lives. I promise you, this is just amazing to me, but she really does seem to know someone everywhere and if she doesn't, she's stellar at making friends. So while washing our laundry, we had a lovely conversation with a girl who is living in Sorrento as part of a work-study program while studying to become a chef. I'd go to Italy to learn to cook too... these people can definitely throw down in the kitchen!! So the conversation ends, but the laundry's not done washing, so we make a quick trip to the pharmacy to pick up cold meds for the ailing uncle and have a coffee out of the machine. YUM for me!! I wind up walking the meds and child back to the hotel while Aunt Ceil writes out postcards and switches laundry over... this is good because one can never really do enough walking. Yes, I do actually believe that, although my child strongly and verbosely disagrees with me!

When we got back to the launderette, we decided lunch on the way back to the hotel was a great idea so we stopped in at Il Ritrovo for this delicious pizza and salad combo. I'm pretty sure the pizza was half quattro formaggi (four cheese) and half prosciutto (ham). The salad was an awesome suggestion from Aunt Ceil: it's ham, buffalo mozzarella and a little lettuce on a bed of melon. Delicious! We had a leisurely meal... the only thing we didn't have to wait for was the beer... and enjoyed the nice weather and the calmness of the day. As we were paying, it began raining, so we stayed a short while longer and Felix did what he does best: found something that could be a gun and used it!

I can't really express enough how much I love having an unscheduled day to run with and actually running with it. The only thing we knew we needed to do was laundry, so we did. There was no timetable to follow, but there was plenty of time for conversation and just sitting around experiencing our little piece of Italian bliss. When we finally made it back to the hotel, Felix wanted to jump in the pool but it was cold enough that I was pretty sure it wasn't a good idea... didn't stop him. He played by the edge (but didn't get in!) until he was thoroughly soaked and I had to bring him a towel from the room because the hotel staff wouldn't let him come in trailing a literal river behind him!

I took advantage of the time in the room to move more pictures from my camera to my computer, then let the munchkin hang out with the other boys (and his gameboy, of course!) while I brought the computer and some wine up to the rooftop to enjoy conversation and pictures. I keep forgetting how nice adult interaction is and I'm quite grateful to have had such fun people to spend my time with in Sorrento.

Felix was ecstatic to learn that we were leaving in the morning, but naturally couldn't bring himself to sleep at a reasonable hour. It was nice to have the windows open all night, though it was definitely chilly in the morning! We had a quick breakfast and said our goodbyes. The plan, since I was still assuming an eight hour drive, was to hit the road early enough to be in Tuscany for lunch and make it home in time for dinner. Whoops. I'm really good at planning, but execution just doesn't seem to be my strong suit. As soon as we got on the road, we were (naturally) behind a tourist in a rented vehicle who was driving extremely cautiously... and pissing off everyone else on the road. I learned a lot of Italian sign language in the 45 minutes we were trapped behind them on this winding cliffside road. I also saw some of the most dangerous driving maneuvers I've ever seen in person during that time. Once we were finally past him (yes, it was a man, I checked!) we headed toward the autostrada only to be caught in a fabulous traffic jam. Traffic in the circle really is supposed to keep moving, but they can't if the people exiting the circle are waiting for everyone and their mother to cross the street. Perhaps this is the fundamental flaw in the system. I decide to bypass the traffic circle jam by taking the second exit instead of the first (checked the map first to make sure they both went the same way) and we were off traveling through tiny towns on our way back to the autostrada. It was very scenic. We accidentally drove around Mount Vesuvius because we got on the autostrada in the wrong direction. At least it was picturesque. So we finally get headed in the right direction and make it to Tuscany just at riposo when all the cafes have closed for the period between lunch and dinner. So much for lunch in Tuscany! Oh well. On the bright side, neither one of us is hungry and both of us want to be home, so it's not a problem to keep going. We arrived home before sunset, which was really nice. The car was FILTHY, which I think is going to be the car's theme for life in Italia. It was freezing compared to the tropical climate we had just been in, though in reality it was only around 50 degrees. We crashed out almost as soon as we walked in the door... nice ending to a great mini vacation!