when life gives you lemons...make limoncello!

Today was an unusual first for us - we took it easy! Yes, that's right, the two of us, who usually jam pack it all in, were charmed by the lazy pace of life in Sorrento, and instead of trying to squeeze in Capri, we stayed in Sorrento the whole day, from the sunny blue-skied morning to the random mid afternoon downpour to a cool bit pretty night. (And we were glad we skipped Capri as it really wasn't the right season and would have been raining and a lot of expense, time, and effort to not get to see the main (summery) attractions.

So anyway we spent the day here, wandering through stores selling limoncello, the area's big product, along with limoncello creme, candies, even lemon pastas and the like. We walked through the pretty lemon orchard, tasted samples of limoncelo (which um, SOMEONE forgot to tell me was very strong! Ouch!). And lemon filled chocolates - even someone like me, not a fan of lemons, could find something tasty here. So anyway we went shopping, walked by a cliff and looked at the water and mount vesuvius, got some souvenirs, and ate lunch at an empty restaurant - somehow this always happens to us in europe - we have yet to figure out or really understand how their schedules work - ie when normal italians eat since apparently no one eats lunch at 1:00. Oh and sidebar, if someone could explain to me why all public bathrooms in italy seem to have no toilet seats, that would be great. Anyway.
After lunch it was apparently siesta. Everything shut down. How this place functions mystfies mee but anyway, when in rome... Or in this case sorrento... We went back to our hotel and took a nap, but FORCED ourselves to get our butts out of bed and see the town at night (had we not we would have killed any progress we had made on the jetlag and wound up awake at 2 am). So anyway we went back into town. Still full from lunch (how these people live on this high-carb diet is also a mystery to me - pasta and bread...) We decided to just get gelato, which we found at the Tea Room, an odd bakery slash ice cream shop slash cafe, complete with a collection of quasi-celebrity guest pictures including an entire wall of laminated pictures with the stars of The Bold and the Beautiful from sometime in the early 90s... Also present with less prominence, sofia loren, whitney houston, and (only sharon and mom will get this - stefano dimera - lol! But how appropriate in southern italy!). Anyway, we actually really enjoyed our lazy shopping and eating day, gearing up for tomorrow, when we take the high-speed train to florence and get back to the world of sightseeing, museums and "beware of pickpockets.". It would sure be nice if all of italy didn't come with a warning label...ok time to crash, hopefully more pics tomorrow but I don't feel like paying another 10 Euros an hour to get on the internet which I would need to do to do that... Perhaps tomorrow...