Sorrento

For drinking , stylish Bar Ercolano , right on Piazza Tasso, isn’t as pricey as you’d think and is vibrantly sited. The terrace bar in the Circolo dei Forestieri is a genteel place to drink and has wonderfully romantic night-time views, as well as a diversion floor, and for some vicarious glamour head for the beautiful outside bar at the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria , which looks crossways the bay to Vesuvius. Bollicine , a small wood-panelled wine bar on Via Accademia, is a smart place to sample a wide range of good Campanian wines. For late-night drinking, the pubs along Corso Italia are as good a place as any: try the capacious English Inn , Corso Italia 55, which has a free outside diversion floor upstairs that gets packed in the summer; and Chaplin’s , almost opposite, which provides Internet access, is open till late.

Sorrento has no shortage of restaurants , but in the more touristy places service can be slow and the food not up to scratch. If you just want a snack, Bar Rita , Corso Italia 219, can’t be bettered, with a wide array of sandwiches, cakes and other delicious lunch items. Il Buco , Rampe Marina Piccola 11, Piazza San Antonino. Just off the square down a cobbled alley, this is a fine option for lunch or dinner.

La Fenice , Via degli Aranci 11. A great place with a lively atmosphere. Closed Mon.

Giardiniello , Via Accademia 7. Just off Corso Italia, between Piazza Sant’Antonio and Via Tasso, this is a good, inexpensive pizzeria-ristorante with a small garden, specializing in fish, shellfish and barbecued meats. Closed Thurs.

Da Gigino , Via degli Archi 15. A great no-nonsense choice, with excellent pizzas and good pasta and main courses. Closed Tues except July & Sept.

Minervetta , Via del Capo 30. A great scenic option in a pension whose terrace restaurant perches a little way along Via del Capo on the right.

Parruchiano , Corso Italia 71. An enormous restaurant, very favourite locally, with fine food and a wonderful enclosed garden setting. Closed Wed.

Sant’Antonino , Via Santa Maria delle Grazie, off Piazza Sant’Antonino. Terrific pizzas, and a garden as well. No closing day.

Sorrento’s train station is located in the centre of town, five minutes from the main Piazza Tasso along busy Corso Italia. There’s a tourist office in the large yellow Circolo dei Forestieri building at Via Luigi de Maio 35, just off Piazza San Antonino (Mon-Sat 8.45am-2.15pm & 3.45-6.15pm; tel 081.807.4033, aastsorrento@libero.it ), which has maps, details on accommodation and information about excursions - including tours to the Venticano winery, where Greco di Tufo, Fiano di Avellino and Taurasi are produced. The travel offices on Piazza San Antonino can deal with bus and ferry enquiries and reserve tickets. Incidentally, if you don’t want to rely on public transport, Sorrento, Corso Italia 210 (tel 081.878.1386), close by the train station, rent cars and scooters, but check roadworthiness carefully before signing anything. Guarracino, Via Sant’Antonino 19 (tel 081.878.1728), just off the piazza of the same name, rent bicycles. As well as Chaplin’s , there’s a handy Internet café at Via Fuorimura 20 ( www.blublu.it ; Mon-Fri 10am-1pm, 4.30pm-midnight, Sat 10am-1pm, 5pm-1am; L3000/¬1.55 for 15min, L5000/¬2.58 for 30min, L10,000/¬5.16 for 1hr).

Topping the rocky cliffs close to the end of its peninsula, 25km south of Pompeii, the last town of significance on this side of the bay, SORRENTO is solely and unashamedly a resort, its inspired location and mild climate drawing foreigners from all over Europe for close on 200 years. dramatist wrote part of Peer Gynt in Sorrento, designer and Nietzsche had a well-publicized row here, and Maxim Gorky lived for over a decade in the town. Nowadays it’s strictly package-tour territory, but really none the worse for it, with little of the brashness of its Spanish and Greek equivalents but all of their vigour, a bright, lively place that retains its southern Italian roots. Cheap restaurants aren’t hard to find; neither - if you know where to look - is reasonably priced accommodation; and there’s really no better place outside city itself from which to explore the rugged peninsula (even parts of the Amalfi coast) and the islands of the bay. Sorrento’s centre is Piazza Tasso , built astride the gorge that runs through the centre of town; it was titled after the wayward sixteenth-century Italian poet to whom the town was home and has a statue of him in the far corner. There’s nothing much to see in Sorrento itself, but it’s nice to wander through the streets that feed into the square, some of which are pedestrianized for the lively evening passeggiata. The local Museo Correale di Terranova , housed in the airy former palace of a family of local counts at the far end of Via Correale (Mon & Wed-Sat 9am-2pm, Sun 9am-12.30pm; L8000/¬4.13), might kill an hour or so, with its examples of the local inlaid wood intarsio work - most of it much nicer and more ingenious than the mass-produced stuff you see around town - along with various paintings of the Neapolitan school, the odd foreign canvas, including an fog Rubens, lots of views of Sorrento and the Bay of Naples, and various locally unearthed archeological knick-knacks. Otherwise the town is entirely given over to pleasure and there’s not much else to see, although it’s nice to linger in the shady gardens of the Villa Communale , whose terrace has lovely views out to sea, and peek into the small thirteenth-century cloister of the church of San Francesco just outside, planted with vines and bright bougainvillea - a peaceful escape from the bustle of the rest of Sorrento.

Strange as it may seem, Sorrento isn’t particularly well provided with beaches , and in the town itself you either have to make do with the small strips of sand of the Marina Piccola lido, right below the Villa Communale gardens and accessible by a lift or steps, or the rocks and tiny, crowded strip of sand at Marina Grande - fifteen minutes’ achievement or a short bus ride (roughly every 30min) west of Piazza Tasso. Both places cost around L5000/¬2.58 a head for the day, plus charges for parasol and chair rental, although there is a small patch of sand, immediately right of the lift exit at Marina Piccola, that is free. If you do come down to either of these spots, it’s a good intent to hire a pedal-boat (around L20,000/¬10.33 an hour) and get free of the shore, since both beaches can get busy.

If you don’t fancy the crowds in Sorrento, you can try the beaches further west. Twenty minutes’ achievement from the centre of Sorrento along Via del Capo (which is the continuation of Corso Italia), or a short bus ride from Piazza Tasso, there are a couple of options. You can either achievement ten minutes or so from the bus stop down the Ruderi Villa Romana Pollio to some nice rocks, swathed with walkways, around the ruins of a Roman villa; or you could stroll 100m further west and take a path off to the right past the Hotel Dania , which shortcuts in ten minutes or so to Marina Puolo - a short stretch of beach lined by fishing boats and a handful of trattorias.