Winter is a good time to visit the Sorrento Coast!

Our winter experience in Sorrento.

Crowded in summer, sublime in winter.

One of the reasons, or perhaps the main reason, for choosing to go to the Amalfi and Sorrento Coasts in the middle of winter, rather than when they are prey to the summer crowds, is the traffic. Congestion on the road from Naples to Sorrento, and from there to Salerno, is notoriously terrible in the hot season.

But all the blogs and forums agree that the traffic decreases after October.

We landed in Naples just after 6pm on 26 December. We arrived in Sorrento just before 9pm. The distance is 50 kilometres. The traffic was horrible.

You can only put up with that kind of reception if, when you get to the other side, there is:

a) a drink,

b) a good meal,

c) a nice bed.

Sorrento’s Piazza Torquato Tasso was crowded. The centerpiece was a tree with a perfect cone that rose 40 feet into the clear, cold night. White lights cascaded down its sides between bands of soft pink and blue light.

It was an Italian Christmas tree: they don’t make you dizzy.

The square is the heart of an Italian city, and in the heart of the heart is a café.

In Sorrento’s case, it’s the Fauno Bar. The design is art deco, the vibe you get in formal merriment when Italians in beautiful coats and expertly tied cashmere scarves gather to drink hot chocolate, enjoy a late dinner, and gossip.

But we only had eyes for one thing: a Negroni. The Negroni is Italy in a glass, invented nearly 100 years ago by a Florentine man who thought the cocktails newly arrived from America at the turn of the century were too lively for the Italian male. So this. A blast of gin, vermouth, orange and Campari and the little lactic acid knots in my shoulder that had built up from that frustrating push were vaporised.

We covered need (b), a good meal, with beef carpaccio and carne alla pizzaiola (meat cooked with tomatoes, olive oil, garlic and white wine) and caprese ice cream from the nearby Gelateria Primavera.

For (c), the bed, we had to walk through an enchanted lane of fir trees, twinkling lights and umbrella pines. Eventually we reached the bright white walls of our Vacation Home.

Our long terrace looked out over a crescent moon and a glittering bay of Naples. Three hours had been spent in a Fiat cursing trucks and traffic lights; but it had been a glorious night.

In describing the rest of this short winter visit to the Sorrento Coast, it is best to make one thing clear: we were tourists and we went to touristy places. That is not how travel writers behave.

If I had followed that credo, I would have told you about the island of Ischia rather than Capri; the town of Amalfi rather than Positano; Oplontis rather than Pompeii; Mount Epomeo, and Vesuvius. But we spent three days. It was off season. Capri, Positano, Pompeii, and Vesuvius are always extraordinary places. There were tourists. Why wouldn’t there be?

I’ve read insider and local blogs sneering at Sorrento. Why? Then there are shops full of limoncello and lemon-themed ceramics and toiletries. Then you’ll encounter the tourist-friendly restaurants and the people who lure you into their knitwear shops. What do you think?

Lemon liqueur is the local specialty and it’s delicious; while the food is consistently excellent (we had a thing for Ristorante Zi’Ntonio on Via Luigi de Maio) and the knitwear is top-notch (try Vanity on Via San Cesareo).

It’s Italy: they prefer not to produce poor quality items.

Also, this time of year, most of the tourists are Italians who can’t stand junk.

They come down from the north in search of mild days and that formal cheerfulness I mentioned earlier.

The kind of tourist town that gets you down is one where the people don’t really like what they’re selling, or the people they’re selling to, and the tourists feel bored and harassed.

The streets and alleys of Sorrento are noisy, the shopkeepers worry about their goods, and nowhere is there a rip-off. Now that’s a tourist town.

Capri, on the other hand, felt like winter wasn’t really her thing. It’s a good time to wander down to the Grotta Azzurra sea cave and the Gardens of Augustus. But many of the restaurants and shops are closed and the background music echoed a little forlornly through Anacapri’s pedestrian streets. But I did pick up a rather nice linen jacket for a good price, let’s try and change something before spring.

Positano, however, was swinging, and I guess it never really stops. That’s because it is superb: a jumble of old fishermen’s houses and small palazzos that tumble onto perfect crescent-shaped beaches down from the Monti Lattari mountain range in a profusion of blood oranges, bananas and mandarins (and that’s just the color of the walls).

One of those bossy bloggers said: ‘Tip No. 1: avoid driving alone along the Amalfi Coast.

Well, we managed to drive as fast as we could, which meant “not very”: not because of the traffic, but because we kept stopping along the lay-bys to take selfies with the noble sequence of limestone bays stretching out into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

We bought plates and mugs from Ceramica.

I let my agenda slide a bit and asked Lorenzo, the owner, a bit furtively, if he knew of a nice little place for lunch, you know, not too touristy.

He looked at me confused. ‘Eat everywhere. They’re all good.’

So feeling a bit ashamed we chose the most obvious beach restaurant, a place called La Cambusa. We had perfect spaghetti alle vongole and a glass of rosé, and were as happy as the clams on the rustic plate in front of us.

I still couldn’t shake that pesky travel writer credo, so I persisted and we drove past Amalfi into the hills to see what we could find. We found Scala, a rather grim, Name of the Rose-esque village with a grand 9th-century cathedral and a view of the sunset over the pink mountains. It was fine, but Positano is much more fun (and I bought some pretty good suede shoes there, too: Boutique Carro in Piazza dei Mulini).

And before we head back to London: Pompeii.

Even the most sheepish-faced travel writers admit that this is a must-see tourist spot. There were still long lines early in the morning. By the time we left the site in the early afternoon, they were gone.

I don’t have the space or experience to add much to the millions of words that have been poured out on Pompeii since a deadly ash cloud and pyroclastic flow destroyed the city in 79 AD. I suppose everyone has their own highlights.

Mine was the contemporary-looking cube-style design of the mosaics in the House of the Faun, which looked like Escher had been round to touch them up.

Second: the views of Vesuvius between the intact columns and the jagged remains of the villa walls—a killer surveying a crime scene for eternity.

Vesuvius still has the potential to be murderous, and climbing the flanks of a volcano that is statistically long overdue for another explosive episode makes you a little wobbly in the belly region. But up there at 4,000 feet in late December, more immediate physical needs take precedence: how to stay warm while the mountain gods hurl icy winds around the shattered peak.

The Sorrento Coast, that indescribably precious piece of international tourism real estate, faces real problems.

The mayor of Capri thinks his island will “explode” if the 15,000 visitors who flock there each summer day increase.

A UNESCO official warned that cruise tourists who travel the same route every day were “wearing out” Pompeii.

So help them spread the load. Go in winter.

We thought it might rain (it didn’t).

We suspected it would be cold (it wasn’t, except for Vesuvius).

We knew it would be wonderful, but this vacation exceeded all expectations.