Town Crier Articles

Several years ago, my wife Janice and I traveled to Sorrento, Italy for a Fall holiday.  I am retired now but I did travel a lot in my later work years and built up numerous frequent flyer points for both airlines (American) and hotels (Hilton).  I was able to take Janice with me on many of my business trips at, basically, no cost to me by using my points for Janice.  Of course, one of those perks was to be able to be upgraded to business class.  Janice traveled with me to Atlanta, Seattle, Canada, Scotland, England and many other locations.  Now, it was Janice’s turn.  She also traveled extensively in the later part of her work career as a representative for a medical device company where she would teach the medical staff how to use her companies equipment. So, we went to Sorrento on her points and stayed on her points.  I do not even remember why I wanted to go to Sorrento, it had no personal connection to me.  It was probably some conversation I had with my son’s wife regarding traveling to Southern Italy.  I am not sure.

 

We flew into Rome, Italy and spent the night at a small hotel.  It had one of those old lifts (elevator) where you had to lift the wire door up to enter the elevator.  Our host was very gracious and allowed us to have dinner even though the arrangement was for breakfast only.  The next day we took the train to Naples where we changed trains for the trip to Sorrento.  

 

Prior to leaving for Sorrento, Hilton wrote Janice and offered an upgrade for only $245/night, additional.  She declined and when we got there, is was like one day into the off season, they upgraded us at no additional charge.  The Italians, in our experience, are wonderful, gracious people.  Everyone associated with the travel industry spoke excellent English.  We were able to purchase items in town even though many of the stores employees did not speak English.

 

We usually walked to town, a mile or so and ate in local restaurants.  We took only one side trip and that was to the Isle of Capri on a privately charted, very small boat.  The photo is of Janice and me.  The object that Janice is holding is:  “Flat Stanley ”.  For those who might not be familiar with “Flat Stanley”, at that time grade school age children were encouraged to have relatives have their pictures taken with:  “Flat Stanley” in their travels.  We sent many, many photos to our grandson.  It cost us a fortune in Verizon overseas bills as he needed them for his school project before we returned home.  We even took a photo of “Flat Stanley” with two Australian teachers who were dining in a table next to us at an outside café in Sorrento.  They were very familiar with:  “Flat Stanley”.

 

We had a lovely hotel in Sorrento with a great view of the Mount Vesuvius across the Bay Of Naples.  That is Sorrento in the foreground, across the Bay of Naples is the mountain that blew up around A. D. 79 and killed every one in the town Pompeii.  For you history buffs, we did travel to Pompeii to view the ruins.  To Janice, a history buff, it was a historical moment with learning how the tracks in the rock were eroded caused by cattle carts and how they had little fast food restaurants, to me it was just a pile of rocks. Yes, we did take a train to Herculaneum, another pile of rocks that was buried at the same time.  The only thing I remember about that is an Italian woman realized that we were going there and realized we did not know it was time to get off the train and she alerted us.  Italians are very nice people.

 

During the trip to the Isle of Capri, the Italian boat driver and buddy, dropped us off at the only town on the Island so we could tour.  While we where there, the two of them went off to snorkel and spear fish.  I do not remember if they caught anything.   What I do remember is that Janice left her hat on the boat when we got off at the end of the trip, the next day, the front desk at the Hilton called us to let us know that the Italian boat driver had dropped off Janice’s hat at the front desk.  God bless the Italians.