Towers Hotel – WrAnTz

Italian Adventure Part 4 – Spa Day

Typical, about as accurate as any British weather forecast, the local Italian forecast was for rain and thunderstorms today, 65% chance of precipitation. So far we have had a mix of blue skies, sunshine, and clouds. Yes there were a few specs of rain, but nothing that would have stopped us from doing that touristy thing. Because the forecast was so dire we had opted to stay at the hotel and for Gerry to visit the spa.

After breakfast we dropped in at the spa reception and booked Gerry in for a Hot Stone and full body/facial massage. Her session was booked for 14:00, which left us with a couple of hours to fill.

We went for a stroll round the grounds and took a few external photos of the hotel.

View From Hotel Terrace Looking East

Newly Constructed Beach. Not open during our stay.

Whilst standing down on the dock, we were accosted by a lady offering to take our photo. We gratefully accepted and then I did the same for her. As we were chatting, I asked her where she was from.

Mount Vesuvius – Clouds and Blue Sky

This is what 65% chance of precipitation, cloudy skies and thunderstorms look like.

Towers Hotel – Looking west along the shore line.

Towers Hotel – More of the industrial architecture

Towers Hotel East Wing – Showing the towers after which the hotel is named.

Towers Hotel West Wing – Where we stayed

Well, what a small world. Turns out she is from the other side of Waterlooville, where we live. Much of her family are scattered around roads close to our home. After a bit more chat we went our separate ways.

Towers Hotel – Terrace leading to the pool

By the time we reached the pool Gerry decided it was warm enough to brave catching some rays by the pool.

Towers Hotel – Looking west from poolside

Towers Hotel – Viewed from poolside

Meanwhile, I was foolish / brave enough to test the arctic waters of the pool.

Towers Hotel - Pool — Towers Hotel – Pool

Bearing in mind this is an outdoor pool, unheated and we haven’t seen any real sun for a couple of days. Despite knowing this, I still went in. Although there weren’t any icebergs it certainly felt cold enough for them to put in an appearance.

To be honest, once I was in, it felt ok. And after a few lengths, I was so acclimitised, I was reluctant to get out. There is a shower room close to the pool which I made good use of. Back in dry clothes once again, we strolled along to the bar for tea and coffee before Gerry headed to to the spa for her hot rocks massage.

Castellammare15 — Although no storms or rain the wind had picked up. These two guys had to walk backwards to carry the pictures or risk having them bent and broken by the wind.

Having escorted Gerry down to the spa reception and made sure she was checked in OK, I headed back to the bar for a spot of lunch. Tuna & Tomato in a Ciabatta roll accompanied by, yep you guessed it, a Nastro Azzurro.

Gerrys spa treatment lasted for just about an hour and by the time she caught up with me at the bar it was time for her to have a plate of fries and a Nastro Azzurro all to herself.

We then headed back to our room to finish of that second bottle of Sicilian Syrah.

Our room has windows looking both North and East which makes it a great vantage point for any nautical activities.

Fishing Boat and Sail Boats

Fishing Boat

Sails Across The Bay Of Naples

Ferry Boat – Possibly from Capri heading into Castellammare di Stabia

Fishing Boat

And to finish off for today here are a few photos from my phone.

Vesuvius by night

The route from the garage to the hotel.

From the roof of the garage looking west

From the roof of the garage looking away from the hotel

From the roof of the garage looking towards the hotel

The route from the garage towards the exit

Well that’s it. Going for dinner shortly as it is just after 20:00

Good night all.

Italian Adventure – Paused

It rained last night and by and large it has rained pretty much all day. Consequently, we have been skulking in the hotel.

We managed to miss breakfast. So by way of a consolation prize, we treated ourselves to lunch.

I had Octopus Salad, followed by Sea Bass with bacon wrapped asparagus and mashed potato while Gerry had Veal Escalopes with Bacon Wrapped Asparagus and mashed potato. All washed down with the ubiquitous Nastro Azzurro.

I must say that the restaurant food at the hotel is pretty good. Cooked well and nicely presented. The breakfast buffet is pretty comprehensive with cold meats and cheeses, hot scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms etc. Plenty of serials and cakes / pastries on offer along with various breads. Not brilliant stuff but will give you a good energy boost to get your day under way.

I should mention that last night we decided to have a bottle of wine with our meal. We chose an Italian Merlot but they had sold out. The waiter suggested two alternative wines one of which was a Syrah.

We chose the Syrah, from the vineyards of Feudo Principi di Butera in Sicilia. It turned out to be both a good suggestion and a good choice. Lots of flavour with a dry after bite. In other words a damn good anaesthetic.

Today hasn’t been a total loss. We have arrange an excursion for Monday.

We are going to visit Pompeii, come rain or shine. According to the extended forecast we can expect clouds with sunny periods and just a 25% chance of precipitation

That leaves us with Saturday and Sunday to fill. Saturday is showing 65% chance of rain so I think we will try to get Gerry into the Spa. Sunday is looking a bit better. We may chance trip to Capri, it depends on the sea state. Gerry loves the sea, to look at, but she doesn’t mix well with boats on the water. If it’s a bit fallollopy then a stroll around Sorrento may be in order. Where we can at least dodge the showers by ducking into one of the many bars and coffee shops.

After Monday we can start looking at perhaps a trip to Herculaneum. Again, this is very weather dependent.

Fingers crossed.

Italian Adventure Part 1 – Home to the Hotel

Not much sleep Monday night. Tried to get some shuteye but failed and eventually, 02:00 Tuesday morning, it was time to load the car and head off to the airport. The journey was uneventful apart from the small issue of the entry to the M23 from the M25 being closed.

Seems every time I go to the airport, these days, some part of the roads system is totally closed. Be it the A3, North or South bound, doesn’t seem to matter. Or the M25, so many opportunities to cause chaos. Anyhow, we managed to navigate around the road closure and were soon at the airport. At 04:00, it was a tad cool, actually just 3 degC and as usual there is a guy wandering around in shorts and t-shirt. I guess he was an optimist.

Our next hurdle was check-in / baggage drop-off. Having nailed the online check-in Easyjet are now trialling passenger self-service baggage drop-off terminals. Basically they have done away with a friendly person and replaced them with a computerised set of scales.

This was a painful, financially, experience. It turns out that our holiday deal, via Secret Escapes, only included 15kg of hold luggage. I missed that little nugget in the Secret Escapes paperwork. I already knew we were one or two kilos over our allowance after doing due diligence and checking Easyjets allowances on-line. 23kg it says. We had 24kg. Our new friendly (sic) computerised scales cheerfully informed us that we were 9kg over our limit and that we would need to pay a charge of £10 / kg. 90 jaw dropping quid. “Is that the total for the return journey ?” I enquired of a real human. “No, just the one way” she replied. She was a bit more helpful and suggested that once we were in Italy we go on-line and amend our booking, pay for extra baggage or another hold bag. That way we would pay a significantly lower fee.

Suitably chastened, educated, and therefore wiser, we coughed up and proceeded through security to go and find a cup of tea while we awaited our departure gates announcement. When said gate was announced we made our way to the waiting area. There we discovered that we had to take a bus ride to the plane. I haven’t had to do that since the seventies. The ride took so long we are pretty sure that, although we were booked into the Gatwick North Terminal, we actually departed from the South. Either that or, as one wag quipped, we had travelled half way to Naples by road.

Another niggle with the boarding process was that we had paid for extra leg room and priority boarding and should have boarded first. Instead it was more like the January sales. Two coach loads of passengers arriving at the plane together and boarding from both ends at the same time. It was never going to end well. I know, we all have allocated seats but it is the principle and of course, the money.

The plane took off pretty much on time, we had a smooth flight and arrived at Naples airport around 09:40. Even at that time of the morning Naples was significantly warmer than the UK.

Our next challenge was to find the car rental office. There is a courtesy shuttle bus, apparently driven by the grumpiest, near mute, guy imaginable. He efficiently navigated the 5 minute drive to the rental offfice. Still no happier, he started to unload the luggage, then just wandered off leaving the rest for his clients to sort out for themselves.

The car rental experience was much more pleasant. An upgrade from a Renault Twingo, to a Citroen C3 with more luggage space and most importantly, for me, more head room. Also, surprisingly, we only had to pay around 20% of the deposit we had been told was due. i.e. 300 euros as opposed to 1500 euros. The lady at the rental desk was very helpful, providing us with clear directions to escape the chaos around the airport, and get us on our way to the hotel.

The journey to the hotel was not as slick as it should have been. It started well, using my phone as the satnav. However we entered a tunnel, after about 15 minutes driving, and the GPS lost it’s bearings and couldn’t reconnect. It took us a while to find a safe place to pull over and restart the navigation exercise. We were then taken round in a huge circle. Having been through each of two tunnels twice in each direction, we weren’t sure the app and GPS actually knew where we were. So, another stop and restart seemed to sort things out and we eventually arrived at the hotel.

Old Building on the Mountainside Behind the Hotel

The Towers hotel is in a superb location and we are really pleased with the room, which has fab views, across the Bay of Naples. Mount Vesuvius is visible directly through our window. We both enjoyed lunch sitting on the terrace with Vesuvius as a back drop …..

Vesuvius – Viewed over Cheeseburger and Fries

Gotta Love A Peroni – My First Beer Of Our Stay In Italy

….. and after a brief walk along the shore line we returned to our room and crashed.

But not before I had taken a few snaps of the surrounding area …….

Scoglio di Rovigliano

Heading For Home

Mount Vesuvius and Coastal Lights

Castellammare Di Stabia

Annoyingly, the cold that I had just over a week ago, has decided to put in an encore appearance. So due to that, and the rather large cheeseburger and fries for lunch, we decided to bypass dinner and headed for beddy-byes.

Ready For The Off

So here we are, suitcase packed and ready to begin our Italian adventure.

packed

That’s the good news. The bad is that we will have to set out at silly o’clock in the morning. Our flight is due to take off at 06:00 which means leaving the house at around 02:00, and that is my normal time for hitting the hay. So not much sleep tonight.

The flight gets into to Naples around 09:30, which means we will have the best part of the day to really get our holiday started.

We are staying at the Towers Hotel Stabiae Sorrento Coast

towers