Arrived in Sorrento

I made a mistake in my last blog.  It wasn't a three hour train trip to Srrento, but rather three hours to Naples, where it was necessary to change onto another train bound for Sorrento.  We had travelled first class on the Naples-bound train, but the connection was hardly even third class.  Cattle wouldn't travel on it.  It was an old- and rickety-looking train that carried us right around the bay all the way to Sorrento, and it was the hottest journey.  I was reminded of the movie, Schindler's List, starring Liam Neeson, in which the Jews were packed in like sardines on an extremely hot summer's day during the Second World War.  In the movie, Schindler gets a massive hose and goes from carriage to carriage spraying and cooling the Jews down.  I was hoping someone would come along and do the same for us.

We are now at our hotel, the Hotel Nice, in Sorrento.  In 1884, my great-grandfather, Felix Thode, sailed from Hamburg to Sydney on a ship called the Sorrento.  Presumably, that ship was named after this city.

Between Naples and Sorrento, you see the refreshing Mediterranean to the west, and in the foreground to the east, you see suburbs, and in the background is the mighty Mt Vesuvius, that ancient source of the disaster that befell the place we will visit tomorrow, Pompeii.