We found that travelling the Sorrento peninsula on a budget is easy.
Emperor Tiberius built his palace in Capri and his adoptive father Augustus hang out on Marina Piccola two thousand years ago. Romans, royals, authors, jetsetters and celeberites have enjoyed the Sorrento peninsula and the Amalfi coast for centuries. By 2023, you would think every on-the-cliff, pitoresque small village in this region is commercially exploited and “contaminated” by tourism. It is not. Well, a very real damage is the toxic waste dumping in the bay of Naples by the Camorra mafia. That’s another story.
My wife and I and our three teenagers made a 10-day quasi ecotourist trip on a €3,000 budget this summer. We visited Capri, Positano and Pompeii, Sorrento and The Amalfi coast.
Travel budget
I say quasi, since we flew. Train from Norway, or continental Europe, i.e. Denmark is simply too expensive for five people in times with increasing interest rates and prices. We checked, but I can only confirm the recent Greenpeace report finding that air travel in Europe on average costs twice as much as train tickets.
Travelling by train and bus between Naples, Vico Equense where we stayed, Sorrento and Pompeii is cheap and easy. No need to rent a car.
Castello Guisso
Vico Equense town on the Sorrento coast has everything you look for. It is also rewarded for its marine environmental efforts. We found a fully equipped Airbnb apartment inside the medieval Castello Guisso that sits on the very edge of a 150 meters high cliff. We felt like living in a museum with thick walls keeping the heat out, a beautiful pool area and an elevator to the beach. For something similar in Positano, we would probably pay €500 a night. We paid 1,500 for 10 days. This place was a very pleasant surprise.
The emerald colored water down at the beach looks great. The sea bed however, is grey. I check the Plan Bleu dashboard map for the Sorrento peninsula. Not good. The six indicators on marine pressure combined puts the waters around bay of Naples and Salerno in red.
Eating
We ate a Cerasè, Terramia, the One meter pizza, Hotel Sporting, Barrio Osteria. All had good food and big pizzas at €9-11. We made breakfast and lunch at the apartment, made lemonade of the worlds best lemons, drank limoncello, local wine and bought groceries at Conad.
Reading
We brought three books; an old-school travel guide, Elena Ferrante’s My brilliant friend and Roberto Saviano’s Gomorrah, the book that reveals the Camorra mafia in Naples. Combined, they provided three very different angels of the region.
Who are the ocean criminals?
Who are the criminals, what do they steal and how much damage do they cause?
Ocean criminals can be either of the three categories:
- Those who actually break the law
- Those who legally speaking don’t break the law, but definitely cause damage and give a damn
- Activists that in fact break the law (social order etc.) but make a big contribution to move society in the right direction
Capri
Ferries to Capri go every 20 minutes from Sorrento and cost around €40, unless some of the many super yachts in these waters give you a ride. A one-day trip works fine and we went to Marina Piccola and Villa San Michele, Tiberius’ palace which was bought and developed by the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe. We crossed the island by foot to Marina Piccola, took a taxi to Villa San Michele and walked down the Phoenician steps back to the port.
Positano
This is where the quintessential photos are taken of the beautiful houses boasting a mesmerizing tapestry of pastel hues.
In July you can pay €4,000 a night at Le Sirenuse (very few places offers this refreshing price). Fantastic view (as is available from everywhere along the Amalfi and Sorrento coast), packed with people and Vespas (only a few places), pricy (only a few places) and impossible to feel you’re anywhere but a hyper tourist place. No offence to Italian workers and owners doing tourist business, but the Southern Italy feel probably left this place many years ago.
In stead of going to the main beach, try Fornillo beach. We ate and hang out at Da Ferdinando. Great place, good food and prices and nice atmosphere. Sun bed rent includes taxi boat to Positano.
Budapest
To balance out the constant and uncivilized TikTok and Instagram feeds, we took advantage of a stop over in Budapest: “Kids, what happened in 1956 and what did Soviet troops do?”, “Let’s recover at the Gellért thermal bath!”, “What are the nationalist roots in Hungary and did you know Ukraine is one of its neighbours?” We felt we got more out of our GHG emissions with this stop over.
Verdict
Most importantly, of course, is that we had a great vacation on a tight budget. On our way home, NASA says that July is likely to be Earth’s hottest month in hundreds if not thousands of years. I am happy our kids had this Italy experience. But I am also sad on their behalf and also provoked that trains cannot compete with air travel.
Travel letter from Rhodes
– Kalimera!, I say to the receptionist at the hotel Nathalie. I wonder if this is what the construction workers said 2,300 years ago as they arrived the site erecting the Colossus of Rhodes. It was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
