We arrived in Sorrento on Friday, April 27^th.  This place is as magical as we remembered it.  We were looking for a different restaurant to try, new to us, and we set off on what Doug’s phone with the map said was a 13 minute walk.  Well, about the time we reached the 20 minute mark, Doug who was in the lead slowed and started scratching his head as he peered into his phone.  There should be a police station here he observed staring into his phone.  I remarked that there was one we passed a few hundred yards back.  Oh well, we’re on vacation and just looking for another adventure.  Here we had one staring us in the face.  We backtracked and walked on up in the new direction.  Reaching the main road in Sorrento, the Via Corso Italia, we walked on with Doug leading us to the appropriate side street and in no time, other than the time someone in our group knocked on the side of a car that tried to take us out, reached the desired destination:  La Cantinaccia del Popolo.  This little off the beaten path place was jammed to the gills.  We would have at least a 20 minute wait.  No problem, we’re on vacation.  So we watched and observed.  We watched how the staff interacted with the customers, smiles on their faces, always hustling, laughs were easy and freely given.  We met the owner.  We met the owner’s 11 year old son who would swoop in after diners left a table and he would clean up the table and set a new place setting.  We met the owner’s teenage daughter who was taking orders from customers.  There was a great vibe to this place.  People on yelp and tripadvisor raved about the lasagna here.  Soon we were seated and when ordering, Doug and I both set out to try the lasagna.

For some perspective, the best lasagna either one of us has ever had was in a hole in the wall place in Bologna, Italy.  We stumbled upon that place on our first trip in 2013.  When we returned to Bologna in 2016, we stopped at the same hole in the wall place to try the lasagna again, to see if it lived up to the hype in our own minds from our visit three years earlier.  When we sampled that again in 2016, the answer was….there was no hype, this is the best lasagna we have ever eaten.  Now flash forward to last night.  We are now sampling the lasagna from La Cantinaccia del Popolo.  Oh my, this lasagna is really good….exceptionally good, maybe even better than that.  One of the ladies asked how this compared to that lasagna at the hole in the wall place in Bologna.  Hmmm.  It seems close.  Since Bologna is our next stop after Sorrento, we can have a close in time comparison.  Both Doug and I decided that we would need to sample the lasagna here in Sorrento at least one more time, just to give it a fair shot.

Saturday in Sorrento found us wandering down to the Corner Shop, where we renewed old friendships with Giovanni, the proprietor and his dad.  They told us about an air show that would happen at 2 pm today with the Italian fighter plane squadron.  We made plans to watch it from the rooftop of our hotel.  In the interim, we had lunch at an Irish Bar where one on the patrons coming out yesterday told us as we walked by, we must go there.  “It’s brilliant” we were told.  How can you pass on that kind of an endorsement Ronnie, or Kat?  Welcome home the proprietor shouted to us as we walked in.  What a fun place.  We made it back to our hotel in time to set up on the rooftop of the hotel.  We had the place to ourselves, and the airshow was short but spectacular as the photos show.  Those planes were CLOSE flying through the city!  Dinner plans at a place we have not been to before on the water tonight.

Dinner tonight was a lovely setting, with Mount Vesuvius in the background, and small boats and colorful buildings on the other side.

The service was excellent with smiling faces waiting on us every time we turned around.  Food was good and the company (the 4 Wagnersons) was fantastic.  Boats coming and going, we love this place!