Again, we woke to rain in Sorrento, so decided to take our chances farther south. We liberated the car from the parking lot and drove toward Paestum on the inland road. If it hadn't been raining, we might have braved the coastal route, but the weather discouraged that.

It turned out that we spent 5 days in Sorrento and never saw any of the other towns along the coast. I guess people who have been to Positano, Amalfi, or Ravello will tell us we missed some special places, but I'm not unhappy with the choices we made. Every day was a great new experience, and I'd have a hard time picking any of our day trips from Sorrento to trade for a drive down the coast.

Paestum was a magical, mystical place -- so remote, and so empty that it felt like going back through a time machine. It gave us chills to walk on the centuries-old stones amidst the Greek buildings that predate the Christian era by hundreds of years, still so beautifully preserved. We could see from the many shuttered souvenir and snack stands that the area must be teeming with people in some seasons, but we had it almost all to ourselves. I only wish we'd had a bit more time to look through the very nice little museum. We rushed through it because we were afraid the wet weather was going to follow us down the coast. But we were lucky and the rain stayed north, giving us nice light for photographing the beautiful temples. The dwelling areas of Paestum reminded us of the Anasazi ruins in the American Southwest.

From the Paestum Museum

Back in Sorrento in time for the regular afternoon thunderstorm, which cleared before dinner. We opted to return to La Fenice, since we'd had such a great meal there the night before. This time we sat next to what appeared to be a group of Italians in an English-language class out to practice their conversation. We were amused to see how the girls seemed to take it much more seriously than the boys, who wandered in late and often lapsed into Italian. We both ordered seafood -- I had a delicious risotto with clams, mussels, shrimp, squid, and fish; Mike an excellent piece of sea bass, skillfully deboned at the table.

After some lemon and amaretto gelato, we walked around until we found the Sorrento webcam on Via Tasso.