The rest of the Exodus group on the “Walking the Amalfi Coast” holiday decided to visit Herculaneum on the one free day in the week and hired a bus with the wonderful motto “Pleasure on Wheels” to take them there. Jae and I had decided we wanted to visit Sorrento, where Stew and I had come in 1972, when I had won a weekend for two in the Mediterranean as part of the Guardian’s “Date with the Past” competition. We were very happy to hitch a lift down to the coast with Pleasure on Wheels, and then to get the train along to Sorrento.
At the station, Jae showed the girl in the information kiosk the photo of me taken on the balcony of our hotel in 1972 and amazingly the girl was able to point us in roughly the right direction. We walked through the town and were pleased to see it seemed to be a real town with proper shops – not just places full of tourist tat, as we have seen elsewhere in the area.
We got to the far end of the town. I have a clear memory of walking into the hotel from the road, and finding that we were on the highest floor, with the rest of the hotel spread over about six floors, clinging to the cliffs below the level of the road. Eventually we came to a row of hotels, which seemed to be in the right place. As soon as I saw the name Hotel Belair, I knew that was where we had stayed forty three years ago. The hotels all seemed to be closed up for the winter, some of them having renovations done. It is strange that they were open at the same time of year in 1972. However, I suppose then, holiday weekend flights were in their infancy, and Italy was fairly exotic. Nowadays in March, if you want a few warm days, you are more likely to go to the Canaries, Morocco or Egypt, where it is properly warm.
We wanted to try to locate the exact balcony where Stew had taken a photo of Jae (in utero) and me. We found a gate on the closed hotel which slid open and were able to make our way down a few floors on the outside of the hotel, using the balconies. It was blowing a bit of a gale – our chilliest day yet, with snow on the top of Vesuvius – but we managed a bit of a photo shoot.
When we got up again to the road, we were pretty cold, so Jae suggested that we cross the road to the very splendid, if deserted, upmarket Hotel Bristol for a cuppa to warm us up. At least it was open. We went in and were escorted up to a truly splendid dining room, with wonderful painted tiles on the floor and floral murals on the walls. It had the same fantastic view across the Bay of Naples, that I remember from my first visit. There is the bay in front, Vesuvius centre stage, hills all around and the fishing village of Sorrento almost at our feet.
We showed the very friendly waiter and the manager, who was maybe his father, the photo of me on the balcony in 1972. They were immediately convinced that it had been taken on a balcony of their hotel and delighted that Jae and I had returned! They talked about exactly where it must have been taken, explaining that more floors had been added to the hotel, which accounted for the slightly different aspect.
Jae and I spent an hour or so looking out over the amazing view, which had seemed to me to be something out of this world, on my first visit. We had warm drinks, which they brought with petits fours, then we moved on to limoncello, for old times’ sake.
Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to this gorgeous hotel, which I had quite definitely never visited before, we asked the waiter for the bill. He said we should pay downstairs at reception, and walked us to the lift: the geography of hotels in this area is complicated, because of being up the side of a cliff.
At reception, we asked for our bill, and were told there would be no charge! They were delighted we had come and hoped we would return in the future. So we both came out feeling very well treated, slightly embarrassed, and with big grins on our faces. We have got into blogging of late – but now seem to be getting into blagging too! The Kili 3G plan has a lot to answer for!