Sherlocking In Italy (Part 2)
By Don Hobbs

Our second week in Italy started out in Sant’Agnelo di Sorrento, where Joyce and I were booked into the Angelina Hotel. This was a lovely, small place within a 15 minute walk to Sorrento. The first order of business was to find a proper pizza, which we did thanks to our hotel’s young owner Paulo. He assured us the best pizza on the entire Sorrento Peninsula was a place called Al Solito Posto. For those unfortunate souls who have never been to Italy, the pizza there can be beyond words. This was the pizza at Al Solito Posto. The crust was thin, nearly burnt, but not and the sauce was in a world by itself.

Ironically, Al Solito Posto is located on Corso Marion Crawford. I thought this was an odd name for an Italian street but being the Sherlockian that I am, I knew there was a grand connection. Marion Crawford was an American born in Italy, August 2, 1854, the same year as Sherlock Holmes. He was the author of more than 40 novels, many of them set in Italy. He wrote the first novel about the mafia. It was his grandson H. Marion Crawford (1914 – 1969) who played Dr. John Watson in the television series Sherlock Holmes from 1954 – 1955. This series started Ronald Howard as Holmes.  The elder Mr. Crawford died in Sant’Agnello di Sorrento and the street name was changed to honor him.

Corso Marion Crawford, Sant’Agnelo di Sorrento

From the Sorrento Peninsula we took day trips to Pompeii, the Amalfi coast, and the Isle of Capri where we had a relentless assault on these places of beauty and awe, armed with 2 digital cameras. Between us, we left nothing unphotographed. In fifteen days, we took over 1,600 pictures.

At Pompeii

Capri

Amalfi Coast

Since one can only live in paradise for short periods of time before getting used to it, we packed up and left for the last leg of our journey, Rome. We turned in our rental car at the Aeroporto de Napoli and hopped on a train for the Eternal City. We arrived at our hotel without incident. It was our first trip to Rome so we thought we needed to do some touristy things like the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. So after a brief rest, we headed into what we soon were referring to as The Rome.

We did not get very far when our first real Roman adventure happened. We needed to cross the Piazza di Popelli to get to where we wanted to go. Well we stumbled onto a movie set with filming in progress. As it turned out (we did not find out the title of the movie until we returned home) we were watching the first day of the Rome shooting of Angels and Demons, the prequel to The Da Vinci Code starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard! We actually saw them but were too far away to recognize anyone while we were there.

The black car had Tom Hanks inside, of course we did not know this at the time

Spanish Steps

Tossing 3 coins into the Trevi Fountain

Joyce in front of the Pantheon

There are still the secret Sherlockian treasures from the Vatican but I have run out of time again this week. More next week

Happy Collecting!!