Rome and Campania

A Tour of Italy by Train with Great Rail Journeys

When we returned from last year's Great Rail Journeys tour of Rome, Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Venice and Turin, we immediately booked up this year's Italian tour, including a couple of days in Rome and then a week based in Sorrento with trips out to many historic and picturesque places. We have made many trips both within the UK and on the European continent in the intervening year, trying to make up for time lost in the Covid 19 pandemic, but eventually the day dawned when we left for this exciting Italian adventure. We had tried to revise our Italian language skills after putting so much effort into French for Switzerland and France but I still felt somewhat rusty as I locked the door behind me and set off on a Wednesday afternoon for Stamford station to begin the trip. As it happened we had been home for just a day and two nights since returning from London: it was this trip for which DHL had failed to collect our luggage, so I drove my wife and the suitcases to the station then returned the car to the garage and walked down to join her. 

It did not start as we hoped to continue! We were already starting an hour later than planned because our preferred train to Peterborough had been cancelled, and as it turned out the next one was becoming increasingly late as we waited for it at the station. Having revised our seat reservations on the LNER train from Peterborough to London, I then had to revise them again because of the extra delay. All this alteration was achieved through LNER's smartphone app while on the move. Our tickets from Peterborough to London were included in the holiday and were open tickets, but we felt it was good to reserve seats together. We had just a comfortable interval between trains at Peterborough and then enjoyed LNER's First Class hospitality: sandwiches and hot drinks were offered, but we asked for beer and the kind hostess went and fetched it for us after she'd finished her round. We have almost always found the catering staff on the route to be really helpful in making a journey enjoyable.

In London we spent a night at the Premier Inn opposite the British Library, as so often before taking a train to the continent. After our visit to a brand-new Premier Inn the previous week, this old favourite was now beginning to look in need of some care, but it still provided a clean, comfortable night's sleep before the excitement of the coming day.

Checking out involved posting our keycard in a box by the front door, and we were off to St Pancras International station to meet Catherine, our tour manager and then to scan our tickets at the International Departures gates. Checking in for our train, the 10:22 non-stop to Paris, had just begun and as we cleared the security check and passport controls for both the UK and French border forces the train before ours was announced, so there were plenty of seats in the departure lounge. It was good to see a nice full list of departures on the screens: Paris, Disneyland, Amsterdam via Brussels; the service is certainly picking up again after the pandemic. We had breakfast there, fruit salads bought the evening before and coffee and croissant bought from the Station Pantry near our seats (I can recommend their coffee, by the way - it's the servery on the left at the far end of the waiting area as you enter it from passport control). Soon our train was called, we took our seats and the Eurostar train left from St Pancras on time.

In spite of the early hour (by now about 11:00), the light meal served on the train was lunch, with wine, rather than breakfast as I had expected, but if I changed my watch to French time it was noon which did not feel quite so strange!

We were in Paris Nord on time and were taken by Catherine to board a coach transfer to the Gare de Lyon. A TGV took us to Lyon where we stayed overnight at a hotel near Perrache station, with dinner provided, and breakfast the following morning.

Rome, Sorrento, the Amalfi Coast, Pompeii, Herculaneum and Capri

Thursday, into Italy

After bed and breakfast at Lyon we were taken by coach to Lyon Part Dieu station for our train into Italy. This was a Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) high-speed train and took us as far as Milan in "Business" Class, the middle of three First Class sub-classes on these flagship trains. There was a complimentary drink and snack, and a buffet counter was available for more refreshments, although we did not need this as breakfast was still a recent memory. At Milan we had just a short wait, at the same platform, for a second Frecciarossa to take us on to Rome. We were in the same class and with same level of service, but the train was slightly older and things were not working as well as they should have ... departure was delayed for about half an hour while a technical fault was fixed, but the fixing did not prevent most of the toilets from being out of service most of the time, turning the trip into a game of "hunt the functional loo", nor did it result in the catering staff being able to provide a full service, although it was just about enough to keep us going until dinner. It was not the ideal introduction to international rail travel for some members of the party who had never used it before, no matter how often the rest of us said that we'd never had these problems in the past. One couple spoke about finding a flight home and asked if there was an airport at Sorrento; I was the wrong person to ask, having no idea about airports nor any desire to gain such an idea unless I had to.

In Rome we walked the two blocks to our hotel, the Massimo D'Azeglio, where we had our dinner and a good night's sleep before our first full day in Italy.

Friday, Rome

We had been undecided about the included guided tour of Rome. We had done this last year and wondered whether a repeat would be worthwhile, but as it had been raining last year we decided to join the tour and were glad that we did. Seeing the staggering historic sites in bright sunshine and with a different guide highlighting different things was certainly worth doing and we learnt a lot more, partly because of knowing where we were and being able to piece together the geography of the city. We did, however, have an agenda for the afternoon and left the tour a little before it finished in order to catch the Museo Ebraico (Jewish Museum) before it closed in preparation for the Sabbath. We found the Jewish Museum very interesting. It presented the Jewish religion in way that gentiles like us could easily understand and told us the story of the Jewish community in Rome from antiquity to the present time. The museum is in the basement of the Synagogue and our visit included a brief guided tour of the Synagogue. A terrorist attack there a few years ago killed a child and hurts several people after Sabbath worship and turned a community that had once been largely sympathetic to the Palestinian cause to a much more Zionist position. The people of violence never seem to get that their actions are counter-productive: by argument and persuasion they could have had influential friends but by murder they have made influential enemies.

We had had a decent breakfast, and a coffee break during the tour of Rome, but by now lunch was overdue and we repaired to the same gelateria that we had visited last year, Giolitti, purportedly the oldest in Rome. We needed no more lunch than that. Indeed, so filling and so late it was that we needed no dinner, either!

It's All About the Lemons!

Saturday, Sorrento

We left our suitcases at the hotel and they were labelled by Catherine to be taken to our next hotel, and after breakfast we walked with everyone else the two blocks to Roma Termini station, a huge and stylish terminus, where we awaited and then boarded the Frecciarossa high-speed train bound for Salerno which took us as far at Naples. This time the journey went very well: it was more-or-less on time and everything seemed to work properly. From Naples we were taken by road coach to Sorrento and this part of the journey introduced us to the complexity of the area: the peak of Mount Vesuvius presided, now serenely, over the whole region, and there was some wonderful coastal scenery, but volcano and sea alike were constantly shrouded in mist in spite of the sunshine. There was grandeur and there was poverty, new construction and demolition. Over the forthcoming week we would get to know it all quite well.

Our coach, struggling with traffic, was a little late arriving at Sorrento and we had about half an hour to find lunch before our tour guide was to introduce us to Sorrento. She was already there when we arrived, though, and had expected to get straight on with the tour. By the time discussions had been had about this we were left with just a few minutes for the lunch we had not yet even found, let alone started. It was all fairly chaotic under the attempted leadership of the local guide who seemed too have no skill in decision-making nor in communication - mirroring the events in the British government which were a constant talking point among the participants on the tour! We did get a swift guided tour of the city centre after lunch, and it did include the promised samples of limoncello (with a resolution to return to the shop to buy some of what we had sampled), but everyone was glad to have left our guide behind and be taken to our hotel, the Majestic Palace, where we unpacked our cases as we would not be moving on again for several days.

Dinner was taken at Villa Crawford, a Christian hospitality centre a few minutes' walk from our hotel, and was very good. A bonus was the Saturday evening firework display just along the coast, presumably at Sorrento's seafront, which we could see from the glazed dining room at Villa Crawford. The walk to and from there was good exercise at the end of a day of travel.

Sunday, the Amalfi Coast

It was an early start on Sunday morning, with a coach taking us after breakfast to a little harbour at Massa Lubrense where we boarded the Minerva, which took us on a day cruise around the Amalfi Coast. The boat paused at interesting coastal scenery and historic sites and docked first at Amalfi itself where we had some time to explore. First stop as ever was for coffee, and in this case gelato, and then we walked around the town, or perhaps I should say up and down the town for it is built into a very steep hillside towering over the bay, the houses, shops and other buildings looking as if they are clinging onto a cliff face. With their colours and complexity of projections and height variations these buildings give a wonderfully chaotic appearance from a distance and feel like a vertical maze within. It must be a wonderful place to live, provided you're fit!

We rejoined the Minerva in Amalfi harbour and were taken back round the coast to Positano which we had seen from the sea on our way to Amalfi. Positano is very similar in the way it seems to cling to the cliffs and again we enjoyed a walk around this town, this time having a drink at a waterfront bar before rejoining the boat for the final leg of the cruise, back to Massa Lubrense.

All of the places we were visiting are popular tourist resorts and are well provided with facilities for visitors at typical tourist prices, and occasionally they become very busy. They are not for everyone, but they are popular for a reason and we loved visiting all these places. If you're looking to get away from the crowds to a quiet place, then such a trip is not for you: we do do such trips but this was not one of them. We relied on the boats, the restaurants and the trains and you don't get these if you're one of only a handful of visitors in a summer! But we saw some beautiful coastline and some amazing coastal towns the like of which we have never seen before. On the way back to Massa Lubrense we passed the island of Capri, which would figure later in our week's itinerary.

Dinner that evening was at a rather special pizzeria where we were shown and taught how to make the perfect pizza dough and then chose the topping for the pizzas we were to eat - they did not make them with the dough we had just made, though, for it has to prove for a day before use. Wine was served with the pizzas and it was a lovely rounding off to what was the busiest day of the tour.

Monday, Herculaneum

On the Monday morning we were taken by road coach to Herculaneum (Ercolano), one of the towns estroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79, the deadliest volcanic eruption in European history. Herculaneum had been rapidly overwhelmed by a pyroclastic flow from the volcano while its people were gathered in boathouses behind the beach awaiting rescue. The intense heat killed them instantly and buried them and all that they had in a thick, hot, custard-like mud which preserved most of it just as it was. Timber scorched and charred but remained largely in place and the interior decor of the buildings was preserved by the exclusion of air by the dense coating of mud. Once set, the coating of volcanic mud became like mortar and so when the town was discovered in the 18th century the work of excavation was extremely slow and difficult. Much has since been done both to recover what is there and to interpret it to visitors, but much will remain buried because it is underneath modern Ercolano which makes excavation difficult at best and probably impossible. It is well worth seeing; it helped me that some time ago I had seen a TV programme about the disaster and had a rough idea in my mind of what had happened and what I could expect to see.

For lunch the coach took us on to an agriturismo, a working farm that also provides facilities for visitors and sells its produce on the farm. It was a farm unlike any other I have ever seen, on a steep hillside and occupying quite a small area but very intensely productive. The coach was unable to descend the steep and narrow road to the farm, but a couple of shuttle buses awaited us on the roadside to take us down and then bring us back after the lunch and demonstrations. We were served lunch (again with wine; they do seem to drink a lot of it in this part of Italy!) and then were shown how the cheese we had eaten (mozzarella) was made. We were then taken to another shed and shown how limoncello is made and after a little sampling we bought a couple of small bottles to take home.

The farm also produces olive oil, which they store in repurposed beer bottles! They try to be an organic, environmentally-responsible farm, but I am not sure about standards of animal welfare on such a small farm on such difficult terrain. Still, an interesting visit and good to see an effort being made.

Dinner was at Villa Crawford again that evening. No fireworks this time, but another great meal.

Tuesday, Capo di Sorrento

Tuesday had no included activities and we were free to plan our own day. We had thought of visiting the national archeological museum in Naples where the discovered artefacts from Herculaneum and Pompei were displayed but consulting the internet revealed that it was not open on Mondays or Tuesdays, so we put that plan back to the next free day and decided to explore our local area instead, beginning with a walk into Sorrento from our hotel in Sant Agnello, about a kilometre or so. We took a route through quieter streets near to the sea, and although the hotels and villas obstructed the view of the sea for much of the time we had splendid view of the town and its harbour from one clifftop. We were soon in the town centre where we had met our guide on the day we arrived, and we had coffee at the same place where we had lunch that day. We walked around the town, amazed at the underlying landscape which includes a deep ravine leading down to the harbour - we would see this in close-up on Friday when we came to take the boat for Capri.

After this exploration, guided by reviews on the internet we visited a gelateria near the railway station and sustained by this set off on an adventure to find the ruins of a Roman palace at the tip of a promontory at the edge of the town, Villa del Capo di Sorrento, "Bagni della Regina Giovanna". We began with a bus from the road above the station, just a short walk from where we had the gelato: this saved us having to walk the winding main road with minimal footpaths. The availability of bus route and departure information on smartphone apps has transformed our ability to get around in strange places: even the Maps app that is included in the iPhone operating system these days has sufficient functionality for navigating local bus services. From the bus stop there was a long, mostly downhill walk to the Villa, and we often passed people coming the other way in swimwear, and/or carrying towels or just very wet; when we arrived at the Capo we saw many people, presumably mostly local, sunbathing and swimming, including some who were swimming back to the boat at anchor a few metres from the rocks. There were stern warnings to follow the path around the headland and we did our best to do this, and in one place were diverted through the Roman villa because of a rockfall. We saw lizards and even a snake basking in the sunshine; I have no idea what variety of snake it was but we gave it a wide berth, just in case. 

We are used to Roman ruins in the UK, of course, and if this one had been in England it would have been a major conservation project and quite famous, but here there are so many: it was signposted from the highway and there was an information board there (in English as well as Italian), but nothing else.

Walking back up to the road we were glad to find that the bus stop for the Sorrento direction had a seat. We had about ten minutes to wait until the next bus back to town and were soon joined by a handful of other passengers, falling into conversation with an American father and son who had asked for our advice about the bus service; they had walked up from the town but had not enjoyed the lack of sidewalks.

Back in town we looked around some more shops, bought some gifts from the limoncello shop we had visited on the first day in Sorrento, and then sought somewhere for dinner, choosing to eat at "AZZ" which was offering a fixed-price lasagne and wine deal. Perfetto! From there a fast walk back to the hotel helped to dispel the day's diet of gelato and pasta ...

Wednesday, Pompei

Having arrived in Sorrento by road coach, on Wednesday we finally got to use the trains we had seen and heard passing our hotel. The group walked to Dell Agnello station, just two blocks away, and the narrow gauge Circumvesuviana railway and waited for the Campania Express for our day trip to the ruins of Pompei. There are two types of train operating on this line: the frequent Circumvesuviana trains, some local, some semi-fast, between Naples and Sorrento, and the Campania Express trains which are faster and considerably more expensive (and so far less crowded) but operate only four times a day. Our tickets were for the Campania Express and as we waited at the single platform of our local station we saw one of the usual trains, jam packed, on its way to Naples and thought the extra money well worth it. 

Eventually our train came in on its way towards Sorrento at about the time it was supposed to have left Sorrento and be picking us up to go the other way. The train manager suggested we board it, although going the wrong way, because we would be able to sit in relative comfort rather than stand in the sun. We took this advice and sat waiting at Sorrento while the crew fixed a problem with the train door: this will have been what caused the later running, and repairing it was making it later still, but eventually we left and had a good ride to the station at Pompei Scavi, the excavation. In spite of the considerable supplement for travelling on the Express, it was not exactly Pullman Class, with hard seats and no carpets, but it was cool and we did all get a seat. Access was restricted to one door so that tickets could be checked on boarding to ensure everyone was entitled to use the train. It looked just like the others, with no headboard or branding, so the train manager stood by the one door shouting, "Campania Express" at every stop.

The visit to the excavated city at Pompei was all you might expect. Unlike the pyroclastic flow which had encased Herculaneum in thick, hard material, Pompei was covered in volcanic ashes which preserved it in a different way and had made it easier to uncover. There was also a larger area available to excavate, and it was a larger town anyway. This was a wealthy town and there were fine buildings and big houses. Some of what we learnt overlapped with what we had heard at Herculaneum, but much did not. We saw homes with their impluvia for collecting and storing rainwater, their triclinia for dinner parties and courtyard gardens; we visited the baths and a theatre, and, as at Herculaneum, a selection of shops. The forum at Pompei was large, with a couple of temples and the basilica (a courthouse in Roman times, not then a church). Again, some buildings were simply conserved, a few were restored to give an impression of what they would have been like in their day. For many of the group I think this was the highlight of the holiday, but by the end of our guided tour most of us had been on our feet for long enough and we went straight to the cafés and restaurants for lunch and then off to the station for the Campania Express back to Sant Agnello. After some time to relax, shower and change we walked out to dinner once more at Villa Crawford.

Thursday, Napoli

On Thursday, the other "free" day, we went with another couple from the group to the National Archeological Museum at Naples. We caught the same Campania Express train as on the previous day, but this time it was more-or-less on time, and at Napoli Garibaldi station, keeping our possessions close to ourselves in response to the signs warning of pickpockets, we made our way to the Metro and bought tickets for the one-stop ride to Cavour on Line 2, the quickest way of getting to the museum. With coffee at a street kiosk with seating we were soon on pour way into the museum. The Herculaneum and Pompei displays are on the top floor and as well as showing some of the items found in the ruins of the two cities there is a scale model of Pompei as it now is and a video explaining the disaster and showing what it had probably been like. We had lunch at the museum restaurant, which was very good.

I left the others to study other things at the museum and went for a walk around the city to see what it was like. I must say I was not impressed. I never came across a streetscape that I liked; everywhere was untidy, dirty and unattractive, with rubbish bins, often surrounded by rubbish, simply standing in the street. The traffic was heavily congested and drivers impatiently sounding their horns almost continually. Naples must be the only city in Europe which looks better with cruise liners in its docks. On top of the pickpocket warnings and the low standard of the Circumvesuviana trains the whole place has the atmosphere of film noir - like Gotham City in the darkest Batman films. When I was buying Metro tickets for the return journey a clear attempt was made to steal my credit card but I try to be aware of my surroundings and take all the precautions I can, ignoring attempted distractions, and managed to avoid any loss. It was a close-run thing and quite scary. 

The museum had been good. The city in which it is located will not be getting another visit from me, though. It was a relief to get on the good old Campania Express with its friendly crew and be taken back to Sorrento - we stayed on to the terminus there and had dinner in the town centre, this time a pizza so enormous that even though I had been hungry when I got there I was unable to get near to finishing it. Coffee and back (on foot) to our hotel room for a good night's sleep after washing away the dust of Naples.

Friday, Capri 

The cruise to Capri was one of the activities on this tour that I found most exciting in prospect, and in retrospect it lived up to expectations. We began with a coach ride down to the harbour in Sorrento, into town and down through the narrow ravine that would split the city but for the many bridges that cross it. There we were taken to the fast ferry that took us over the strait to the island of Capri. Each of us had a return ticket for the funicular railway to the higher part of the island. We opted to have coffee by the harbour while the queue for the funicular dissipated a little and then we rode up to the top station, by a little town square. From there we walked up to the peak at which is the ruin of Villa Jovis, a palace of Emporor Tiberius, now surmounted by a church with a stunning modern statue, of Mary, on a column.

Capri, once away from the busyness of the quayside, is a beautiful island. One can hardly call it "unspoilt" in the conventional sense because it is fairly densely populated, but the human hand has been kind to Capri and the built environment is in itself beautiful, as if the town were within a huge garden. Where we walked there were no proper roads, just narrow pathways which we shared with occasional small electric vehicles making deliveries.

Not only was Villa Jovis interesting (yet another Roman palace ...) but the views from it were stunning, back to the Italian mainland, and in particular to Sorrento and the tip of the Sorrentine peninsula where we had passed by boat on our way to Amalfi and Positano earlier in the week. On the way back down we called at a bar beside the way for a drink and a snack, and then farther down the hill the almost compulsory gelato! We explored more around this upper part of the island and then, as the time to leave drew near we took the funicular back down to the quayside and explored the harbour a little before meeting the group and boarding our booked boat back to Sorrento. 

Our dinner on Friday evening, the last of the Sorrento evenings, was at a restaurant in town, o'Parrucchiano, apparently in the premises of a former seminary. This was a particularly excellent meal in relaxed surroundings and with a chance to say thanks to Catherine for her leadership during the whole tour. 

And so to bed, our main cases packed ready for sending home by courier the following morning while we start the journey back to the UK.

Saturday and Sunday, the journey home

After an unhurried breakfast and taking of our overnight case we were taken by road coach to Naples (well, you wouldn't want to rely on the timekeeping of the Campania Express when you've a Frecciarossa to catch!), and then boarded our high speed train to Turin, via Rome, Florence and Milan, the way we had come. This train changes direction three times on this part of its route, so "facing or back to direction of travel" is a rather meaningless concept! As we neared Turin, so the Alps came into view, competing for altitude with the clouds.

We were picked up from Turin Porta Nuova station by coach and driven to the Lingotto hotel. At a fairly busy time this took a little while, although travelling alone I would do this on the Metro in about ten minutes: with a group this would have been difficult to organise. The hotel is located in the former Fiat factory and very proudly tells its history. It was also well-appointed and comfortable, so it was a great pity we were there only one night, entirely in the dark. Maybe I'll have to visit Turin again one day and enjoy it properly. Dinner was at the hotel dining room, but breakfast had to be taken before the breakfast room opened on Sunday morning, for we had to leave before dawn to be taken to Turin Porta Susa station (much quicker on a Sunday morning!) to take the TGV to Paris. The hotel provided coffee pots and a packed breakfast, some of which I ate in the reception area and some of which was taken later, at normal breakfast time, on the train.

This was a brilliant ride through the Alps, although rather slow until well into France where we joined the high speed line to Paris. Near us on the train under a blanket snoozed a young lady whom I met at the buffet counter later. She had boarded the train even earlier at Milan, having travelled there from Rome: no wonder she was snoozing. It was a lengthy journey during which much of this post was written, but there was a decent buffet service and it was a very enjoyable journey. Some slept after their early start, I think.

In Paris we were taken across town to Gare du Nord for the Eurostar train back to London. This was quite a quick transfer on a Sunday and we had bags of time at Gare du Nord. We bought a salad lunch from a small supermarket at the station before checking in for the train. I never find the ticket, passport and security checks at the Paris terminal go half as smoothly as in London, and one officious young woman, having told me to empty my pockets before going through the metal detector, raised her voice to me and repeated the instruction after I had passed her (because I had already emptied them and so could not comply), so I raised my voice to her in order to tell her so. In retrospect I might have added that she ought to have said, "please," as well. The policeman standing by the scanner smiled as he said I need not remove my watch ... It all adds to the fun of travel, but so would polite. smiling, pleasant security staff. It is almost as if they expect 99% of passengers to be terrorists.

We ate our purchased salads as we awaited the boarding of our train, the last we would take as part of the group. This saw us through to the light meal served on board as we approached the Channel Tunnel. Watches adjusted we emerged into early-evening Kent and soon under the Thames into Essex as darkness fell. Then we were in the tunnel under east London (where only a couple of weeks earlier we had been sampling bagels!) and it was time to pack away my MacBook and say fond farewells to those with whom the adventures of the last ten days had been shared. 

Across the road at Kings Cross, LNER trains to Peterborough were not quite as thick on the ground as on a weekday but we waited a while over a cup of tea in the First Class lounge and took a Newark train which had plenty of space for us and enjoyed a last drink and nibble to round off the holiday. This train did not make a good connection for Stamford and we decided to take a taxi home as the cost could be offset by not buying two single train tickets nor taking a taxi home from Stamford station, so although it did cost us more it was not as much more as it might seem at first thought. I had decided when booking the holiday to ask for UK rail tickets only from and to Peterborough since that is substantially cheaper than all the way from/to Stamford and we do not need First Class on that short extra stretch: further, on those occasions when we can use a bus, we no longer have to pay for it at all!

And so home. Some washing to do, but not much because most of it is with DHL, to be delivered to us next week. I don't think I shall be needing my shorts and short-sleeved summer shirts before then ...