A catch-up teaser!

OK, so we have been busy travelling half-way around Italy (it seems) and navigating, successfully on the whole, to variously Sorrento, Grosseto and Levanto. This post is a brief one just in case any readers were wondering if we had in fact came to grief on the roads ... all is well, we have had a couple of days offline but will catch up in coming days and fill you in on the journey and our exploring Pompeii.

The teaser?

Well, while in Sorrento (actually it was really a place with a much longer name - Castellammare di Stabia - which makes it easier to just say Sorrento) we stayed at the Crowne Plaza thanks to Lisa's connections! Here (left photo) we are enjoying a cuppa on our "terrace" with the Gulf of Naples and Mt Versuvius in the background ... imagine we had breakfast & dinner for two days in the dining room with a broader view ... quite something that leaves a lasting impression I will share later. Like Mt. Warning, it is very difficult not to try and capture the many moods and perspectives Versuvius offered ... which is a verbose way of admitting I took a LOT of pictures of it! 

The next two photos are offered to share a sense of the location. I have to say one of the most impressive I have stayed in. The first (below left) is from the private jetty showing the main part of the Hotel under the morning shadow of the cliff (it was once a quarry site loading directly onto barges and boats) and the second. Very imposing. The second (below right) shows a hotel under the cliff against a magnificent sunset we witnessed from a nearby lookout after our day visiting Pompeii - if you click to make the image bigger it may be easire to see the speck on the horizon that was a cruise ship literally disappearing into the sunset!

You have to feel privileged :-).

 More to follow ...

Then, just when all that seemed to be very beautiful, we awoke to another magnificent day today for the final leg of our trip north from Grosseto to Levanto (the northern end of Cinque Terre) which is our base for the next three nights. Good news is after a lot of driving, it immediately felt relaxing and very easy to out our feet up. We hope the weather remains like it was today and it will seem like the world is a very good place ... here are two photos I will end with (since this was going to be short!).

10am in Castiglione di Pescala

6.30pm in Levanto

Can you imagine how nice dinner was?

Makes you look forward to tomorrow!