We were very glad to have chosen Sorrento for our base to explore the Amalfi Coast, even if it wasn’t actually on it.

Sorrento is a large town with wider streets, less stairs, and more shops than any of the smaller and perhaps more picturesque towns that make up the Amalfi Coast. It’s closer to Naples too, so when we had to get to the airport on our last day we hired a driver for 90 euros and left at 7:30am rather than having to leave an hour earlier from Positano or even earlier from Amalfi.

While Sorrento has a number of galleries, churches and other things to do we had miscounted the number of days we thought we’d have there and ended up missing out on doing much cultural stuff. We did fit in time to relax though!

On our first day we had a wander around then decided to eat dinner at Azz! Restaurant because I wanted a break from pizza and the TripAdvisor responses from the manager to critical reviews were hilarious.

We enjoyed the food but were disappointed that no dramas occurred while we were there – other reviewer had made comparisons to Fawlty Towers.

Our best eating experience in Sorrento was kind of accidental. We were walking home from the pool and passed an old building that was set back from the road and surrounded by lemon trees and high walls. Out the front was a chalkboard with a message guaranteed to attract my interest.

I love working gardens so we walked down the driveway to have a look and it turned out that it was a BnB with a large garden that did small set menus three or four nights a week. We booked in for that night and then went for a walk until they were ready.

There were about eight tables under cover in the middle of a lovely garden and the only other people there were an older English pair with whom we chatted after dessert.

The waiter, Roberto, had excellent English and had previously lived in Cambridge, coincidentally. We had four courses in all and all the vegetables were grown in the garden, which we got to wander through before we ate.

After the bustle of Rome, Naples, the buses, and hectic foot traffic of Sorrento, the garden was quite a lovely oasis and a very pleasant way to spend an evening. At nearly 100 euro for two of us it wasn’t cheap but it was certainly worth it.

Of course we did have some pizza to – at a restaurant recommended by one of my workmates (thanks Chiara!).

And a lovely lunch at Mo!Mo!, just around the corner from our Airbnb.

Hrm… this post does seem to have become very food-heavy, but that’s Italy for you!

The only other thing I did was take and early morning walk down to the fishing village that sits on the western side of Sorrento and I planned to go back for a swim at some stage but didn’t manage it.

All in all, we enjoyed Sorrento but probably didn’t really make the most of it, which just leave more things to see if we return.