Good morning from Italy everyone! I am writing this a day late (the next morning) from our beautiful hotel room in Sorrento, on the Amalfi coast. Yesterday was more of a travel day, with our flight to Italy taking up the whole morning and mid-afternoon because of transportation to the airport and it running late. We ate breakfast in our Paris hotel one last time and packed up all our belongings, and a driver came to pick us up and take us to Orly Airport. We arrived there around 10am.
We went through security pretty quickly since Orly is the smaller airport in Paris, and then ate lunch at one of the cafés that was near our gate. Another side note- we ended up checking all of our bags instead of just my dad’s, because apparently what works as a carry-on in the US is too big for a carry-on on most European flights. We still had about an hour and a half to wait, so my mom and I sat by our gate while my dad and brother played video games in the free Playstation game lounge. It turned out we needed a bus transfer to our actual gate, so we got shuttled there and waited a longer time than anticipated to board. We finally got on the plane at 1:10pm, the time we were supposed to depart; we ended up departing 30 minutes later.
Our flight was on Transavia, and we were on a very small, old-fashioned plane. I don’t usually get sick on planes, but the air pressure was really bothering me for some reason. My brother gets very airsick, and he ended up throwing up three times during the flight, and once in the airport afterwards. Other than that the flight was fine, but definitely not the smoothest or best. It was only about 2 hours so I just watched a few episodes of Riverdale I had downloaded on Netflix.
We landed in Naples airport and waited for our driver to pick us up. We had an hour drive from Naples to our hotel in Sorrento, and I just took a nap the whole time. Once we arrived and I woke up, I instantly fell in love with this place. Our hotel, Hotel Villa di Sorrento, is adorable and the workers are so friendly; our room is much nicer than the one in Paris and it has a blue and white beachy theme. We also have two windows with views of some other pretty buildings. It’s right in the heart of the town, near Piazza Tasso. Once we got in and put our stuff down (and rested for a bit since my brother was still sick), we walked to find a place for dinner- which was easy, because everything was Italian food and sounded so good! We walked up and down a couple streets just to sightsee, but ended up eating across the street from our hotel. I got a margherita pizza and it was delicious- it was really big too, I didn’t finish!
After eating, we walked down the main street nearby (which our hotel is adjacent to) and just looked at all the cute little shops, restaurants, and cafés/gelato places. This town is adorable and there’s lemon themed things everywhere. We stopped at a pharmacy to get more cold medicine, and just kept exploring until it got dark. The temperature was great too, warm even when it was dark but not too hot. We missed the sunset but it was still a beautiful night, and everything was so centrally located near our hotel! My brother was tired so we went back to our room around 9pm and got ready for bed. We just relaxed and went to bed around 10, but I had trouble falling asleep again. I love this town, and I’m looking forward to the rest of the time here!
-Brooke
The stairs of our hotel- it looks like we’re in Inception to me.
The flags hung in the Piazza Tasso.
The view from a street nearby.
A cute little shop in a narrow street- all the streets are very narrow here.
The view from our hotel room of some nearby buildings.
adventures of a typical high school student 