Italy Diaries: Postcards from Sorrento

Lemons, lidos and ladies in the Bay of Naples

I’ll say one good thing about the restaurant I eat at on my first night in Sorrento: it has a nice ambience. I’m not telling you what it’s called, because I’m a very nice man. And because this blog is filled with nice places where you can eat nice food. And also, primarily, because the owner gives me the distinct impression I wouldn’t be the first whining tourist she’s flung into the Bay of Naples.

Some clues to help you steer clear though. It’s on Sorrento’s main drag, a gorgeous street with tall yellow buildings where no one is in a hurry. Its best tables are outside under a canopy of trees, and the only Italians in the place are the waiters.

Mine is called Nona and he places my food down with a smile that tells you he’s been placing the same dodgy food down in front of unsuspecting tourists for many years and he will do it for many more. Just keep collecting your tips, Nona, they’re for your smile, not the food. I stare at a lasagne that looks like it’s been cooked with a flamethrower and brace myself for impact.

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I escape down the warren of side streets that come off the main road. I amble down alleys, staring in at souvenir shops that are made quaint by being in a place as pretty as Sorrento. It’s me and dozens of Americans and Canadians and Germans and Australians and normally this would be insufferable, to hear only languages that aren’t actually Italian, but it’s impossible to be annoyed with anything here. Particularly when I can’t speak Italian either.

I walk past a shop selling anything you can think of in the shape of a lemon, a shop fit to burst full of bags and purses, the standard postcard and assorted tat shops that pop up anywhere there’s someone wearing socks and sandals.

And I think back to my afternoon laid on the lido. There aren’t beaches in Sorrento, at least not any that are easily accessible. An elevator down from a park will take you to the lidos, long piers of sunbeds with bars and restaurants.

I don’t normally spend much time on a sunbed, but I spend a whole afternoon there, reading and swimming and fantasising about quitting my job and spending every summer on the lido, fetching beers and pizzas back and forth. It looks fine to me. It’s not even summer and it’s hot enough to stand out in shorts and a t-shirt, to swim in what is briefly my small corner of the Bay.

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It’s the next evening and I’m hunting for something to restore my faith in Italian food. I’ve never had a bad meal in Italy before, not a truly bad one, discounting an emergency McDonald’s, but that’s another story. Nona’s lasagne has shaken me.

I go to where everyone in Sorrento seems to go, A’Marenna. There are queues around the block most of the day. It’s a sandwich shop. A sandwich shop doesn’t seem to be the best place to restore my faith in Italian food, but this is the best sandwich shop I’ve ever been to.

The food is incredible, obviously, but the Italians have a cheat code when it comes to food. Their ingredients are the best and people know what they’re doing. My sandwich is filled with ham and mozzarella and tomato and again I wonder why I don’t live in Sorrento and work on a lido and eat this sandwich every day. That doesn’t seem like a life that would be filled with anything particularly worrying, if you forget about Vesuvius.

But the thing about this sandwich shop that makes it the best is that it’s open until ten in the evening and there’s beer and wine available, and the two women who run it are also drinking and playing music, and they’re not even getting annoyed at the tourists at the next table who’ve decided to sit in the way of the fridge.

And they have a friend who brings them pizza and they give me some for free and I debate chaining myself to the counter so they can never make me leave.

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It’s my last night in town and again I wander the streets, looking at the fancy hotels that I am not staying in called things like the Grand and the Excelsior and the Keep Out, Cheapskate.

I find a bar to commiserate in and sit watching a frantic owner try to take orders for the restaurant that he seems to be surprised to find has sprung up around him, while continuing to make the drinks for the crowd of people surrounding his counter.

Opposite are two American teachers and in between them and I are a couple from Paris who are either on a honeymoon or about to get a divorce, it’s impossible to tell. They’re whispering and ignoring their drinks and exuding the sort of passion I usually muster about things like lemon drizzle cake or Joe Root’s batting.

They’re either extraordinarily happy or the saddest they’ve ever been, I can’t figure it out. They are in Sorrento, though, so I know which one I’d bet on.

Then again, they might have just eaten that lasagne.

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Some housekeeping

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