We're traveling to Sorrento and hoping to have a relaxing beach day with our teenagers. We're staying close to Piazza Tasso, but can go anywhere for a good beach club. Looking for good food, vibe and maybe some beach activities. Thanks!
Posted by
Edmonds, WA 🌨 ☂
12459 posts
A bit of an overview here... https://www.sorrentoinsider.com/en/e/free-public-beaches-sorrento
If you are looking for Florida or Southern Calif. large sandy type beaches, you will be disappointed
Posted by
Wyckoff, NJ, USA
8281 posts
Sorrento is built on a cliff, with wonderful views. As far as I know, one boutique hotel has a private beach, and the public town beach (reached on foot, by bus, or by 2 Euro elevator, is about 40' wide and 20' deep. It is located between two active commercial marinas, and has a distinct odor of diesel fuel.
Most of the high-end clifftop edge hotels have fixed (not floating) bathing platforms standing in the Gulf of Naples, with a bar and snack counter, and reached inside the cliff by the hotel's elevators. We stayed at the Ambasciatori, but only visited the swimming platform. We didn't go swimming. Pool on top of the cliff, of course.
Some of the beaches on the Amalfi Coast, around the corner from Sorrento, are 100% stone pebbles. Staying on the Amalfi Coast makes daytripping much more difficult than from Sorrento, especially in the JAMMED high season, May to September. To get to a Positano or Amalfi (town) beach by public transportation would be at least a one-hour project, with the first bus (half-hourly) too full for you to get on. You may want to investigate the grittier, more working-class towns left and right of Sorrento, which may have beaches. But the beaches would be a walk (maybe a bus?) from the Circumvesuviana train.
I suppose you could also take a ferry to Positano or Amalfi, but that also takes some time, and costs more than the bus. Theoretically, they can also sell out. But some people report getting on ferries with tickets for a different departure. That is a double-edged sword, if you see what I mean.
Posted by
Gettysburg PA
7943 posts
Sorrento isn't really a beach town. And honestly neither is most anywhere on the AC. The beaches - if any- are all pebbles and very small.
As Tim has described the "beach" in Sorrento is usually a floating platform- not really conducive to "beach activities"
Salerno has a strip of sandy beach along the lungomare there but that's way out of the way from Sorretno.
You might find something here:
https://www.italia.it/en/campania/things-to-do/sorrento-peninsula-beaches