To say that Margie spent a lot of time figuring out where we should stay in Sorrento would be a gross understatement. She tackled this like a research project, and if they charged by the web page viewed, we’d never have been able to afford the vacation.
In the end, we ended up with a very fine place, the “Torre Romantico,” the Romantic Tower. That’s better than saying “The Coach House to a Fancy Estate,” though it does actually have a crenelated tower over it.
The building itself has ground floor rooms, but we’re taking the two (connected) upstairs apartments. The second floor has a large, airy living room, a bedroom/bathroom suite (Mary/Stan), another bedroom (Jim/Ginger), a decently appointed kitchen, another bathroom, and a patio.
The second floor has two bedrooms (Margie/Dave and Michelle/Katherine), a large bathroom, a well-lit kitchen, and a less spacious living room.
The two floors are doored in the stairway sufficient to be rentable as two apartments to two groups. For a party of eight, it worked perfectly.
I mentioned the porch on the second floor, and we’ve spent a fair amount of time there. The place fronts on a narrow, traffic-restricted street (scooters and a few cars, but mostly pedestrians), and people walking past in the morning or evening keep looking up at us in envy. Even though we have no visibility to the nearby sea, the thick foliage in the Astor property, and lemon grove to the south, make it feel isolated but rich.
The location is very good. We’re NW (waterward and toward the Marina Grande) from the downtown. We’re really only a 5-10 minute walk up a moderate slope to the main parts of Sorrento, less than that to the fishing harbor.
The building itself appears to be the former coachhouse (or some other outbuilding) of the Villa Tritone (aka Villa Syrene, Villa Dei Leoni, Villa Astor), William Waldorf Astor’s Sorrento hang-out. (Yes, those Waldorfs.) (Yes, those Astors.) The Villa itself is, um, a bit more to rent per week. (Map; we’re the little building on the street.)
For a group, it’s ideal. I was trying to think of how we could have handled having eight of us here in the context of a hotel. Even with separate rooms, we would still have lacked a private gathering place (like the living room). And we definitely saved some money by handling morning food and cocktails/hors d’oevres on our own, let alone a dinner or two at the place. It did indeed feel like our base camp, not where we just pitched down and slept.
And, as well, it was clean and comfortable and open under new management — freshly painted, and with new accoutrements. Indeed, the problems we had were around it being just reopened: some lacks in the kitchen utensils, some issues with the new cable modem/WiFi being fractious, and the DVD upstairs not being installed by the local installer quite yet.
Overall, a very nice place. Recommended for a group staying in Sorrento beyond a day or two.
