Sorrento, Sun And Skinny Dipping!

Friday 18th September

I managed to get up at 10.30am today which was really surprising given the time I went to bed last night! Unfortunately I had already missed breakfast but I wasn't really too bothered this morning. I got a shower and packed my stuff up ready to set off for the train station to head to Sorrento. It turned out that Jeannie, the American girl, also wanted to spend a day in Sorrento so we arranged to go together. I have not really had chance to go swimming in the sea up until now as I don't like to leave my stuff on the beach totally unattended so I was glad of some company for the day.

We got the train at about 1pm from Napoli and arrived in Sorrento just after 2pm. The hostel I had booked was pretty easy to find so I dumped all of my stuff there so we could head down to the beach with a much lighter load. The beach at Sorrento is ridiculously small and I think I might well have gone to Capri or the Amalfi coast if I had realised prior to booking the 3 days in the hostel. We had a good day down there though and I spent almost 2 hours swimming in the sea.

I got chatting with some American girls in the sea - Elizabeth, Alyssa and Melissa - and arranged to meet them at the beach again tonight to have a few drinks and a mini party, so to speak. We all agreed to bring our swimming gear too so we might well end up in the sea again. I was glad that I had made some new friends so quickly as I knew I wouldn't be short of people to speak to for the night and beach parties always tend to be fun occasions.

I rang my dad to arrange for him to send me some more money as I am now running really low - I only have €40 left now and that will be gone some time tomorrow. He was in work today but has said that he will go and do it pretty early tomorrow morning so that I have the money before lunchtime. I found a place that is open from 8am until 8pm tomorrow for me to be able to get hold of the money so it doesn't really matter what time he does it.

I headed back to the hostel so that I could have another shower - it's always nice to refresh yourself after swimming in the sea and it was also pretty warm today so I am sure I sweated a bit. Once I had pretty much got ready to go out I met another 5 American students who would be sharing a room with me for the night. There was also a Dutch guy there who was on his way out for the evening. I only spoke briefly with them all before going out but they all seem nice enough.

I went to the supermarket to see what deals they had on and found a bottle of Jack Daniels for just €12.49!! Needless to say, I snapped that up immediately! I managed to find somewhere nice to eat and chilled out for a bit before heading down to the beach to meet with the Americans. We had arranged to meet around 9.30pm but they said they might be a little late as they had some big meal arranged at the hotel. They turned up just after 10pm but I wasn't too bothered.

I had a really fantastic night at the beach with the Americans and it was probably my most enjoyable night so far since setting off from Chester. We had a game of football, or soccer as the Yanks like to say, which was really good fun. I had Alyssa on my team and we played against a couple of American guys, one called Ian and I can't remember the other guy's name - I'm really bad with names! We won 5-1 so I managed to ensure that the English rep was upheld. We played barefoot and the beach was mostly stones so my feet took a bit of a pounding given the already fragile condition they were in.

I was about to start playing football again when one of the American girls asked me "to go nudo in the sea" with her. Well, it would be rude to say no to such a request so we pretty quickly ended up in the sea skinny dipping at about 1am! I think she was a little shy at first but I think she really enjoyed her first skinny dipping experience. It was funny but she said exactly the same thing I had said the first time I did it - how liberating it felt. We disappeared out into the sea for quite a while and all of her friends got worried as they were shouting us but we couldn't hear them so they thought we had drowned! I didn't drown but I did kick a urchin or something and I now have about 15 spikes in my foot!

All the Americans left shortly after we got out of the sea and I got talking to a group of four people - 2 Italian guys, an Italian girl and a Dutch girl. I sat with them for about an hour trying to speak Italian with them but it is not easy when you are a bit drunk! The centre of Sorrento is not far from the beach but there are some really steep hills so they offered me a lift up to the top which was pretty nice of them. Once they dropped me off I headed back to the hostel and sat at the bar next door having a couple of beers and trying to understand some conversations that the Italians were having - I didn't understand much but it can surely only help to listen to the language being spoken? I eventually went to bed at about 4.30am feeling pretty drunk and pretty tired too!