Home base for 4-5 days in Sorrento or Amalfi Coast? - more details inside but please help!

I'll jump in an answer the last one. I think everyone here will insist you need to be Naples the night before your flight and any other plan is flirting with disaster.

I'm sure others will have input on you other points.

Have a great trip,
=Tod

What are your priorities to see? Does it include the non-Amalfi Coast sites like Pompeii? If so, then Sorrento makes more sense. If your priority is rest and relaxation and taking in the views, then stay on the AC. Personally I found the Amalfi Coast beautiful but underwhelming and we have no regrets that we stayed in Sorrento and made day trips to the AC. We also found Capri much more interesting than anything on the AC, but then you'd have no choice but to take a ferry.

As for your last question, yes stay in Naples the night before; especially if you choose to stay on the AC instead of Sorrento.

There are dozens of threads here disscussing pros and cons of Sorrento vs AC
Please do some forum searches and you will find lots of advice and info
Be sure to filter by Type and Date

You will need to be at the airport by 9 am
Stay in Naples the night before-it’s a quick taxi from the center to the airport

What are your priorities to see? Does it include the non-Amalfi Coast sites like Pompeii? If so, then Sorrento makes more sense. If your priority is rest and relaxation and taking in the views, then stay on the AC.

Our normal vacations have typically been to places like Anguilla, Costa Rica, Turks and Caicos, etc but our girls are older and definitely appreciate the experiences gained in travel. That said, none of us are big museum folks but do appreciate history and unique scenery. I suspect after 5-6 days in Rome they’ll be up for some relaxation (as will I).

We’ve seen a number of hotels in Sorrento such as the Hilton, Grand Hotel President and others that seem like a good spot to chill but also that would allow for walks around Sorrento for food and drink or access to the AC. If I’m trying to limit the motion-sickness chances for my wife and daughter not sure if multiple trips from Sorrento to AC makes sense. Capri is an option but not mandatory.

If we stayed in Positano I don’t get the sense that we’d want to take a ferry/car into Sorrento to see it (this is just lack of education on my part). I realize this forum and everywhere else is made up of people from 18-85 yrs old and ideas of a great vacation are different among us all.

Do private cars get any different travel meaning can they pass buses or are they limited to the same crowded roads?

Last thing I’ve noticed is it seems rare to find even a queen size bed pretty much anywhere down south. Could be availability or lack of physical space but at 6’3” I don’t think I could sleep in a double for 5-6 days.

Thanks!

I'll take your last question. My husband is also 6'3". :-) When you see "double" in Italy, it rarely means what an American thinks of as a "double bed" that is much narrower and shorter than a queen. Most of the time, at least in nicer places, it's at least a queen. Sometimes, it's a king or two extra long twins scooted together and made up as one bed. I can usually look at pictures (or read the reviews) and figure it out, but you may have to contact the hotel and ask. We don't stay in American chain hotels in Europe, but I just looked on the Marriott site and a couple of random hotels in Italy and they're describing the beds using the American sizes - queen, king, twin.
We sleep on a split king at home, and we like the two twins together when on vacation because our sleep schedules are usually so screwed up, at least the tossing and turning doesn't wake the other. We usually stay in apartments and find the two-twin thing a lot because that allows them the flexibility to make it up as either one or two beds.

Since you're traveling with your girls, you might want to consider apartments, so you have a common hang-out areas when you're not out doing stuff and a place to relax that is not the bed. I really appreciate the ability to have coffee in the morning before putting on my clothes and encountering people, or have a glass of wine or snack at the end of a day.

If we stayed in Positano I don’t get the sense that we’d want to take
a ferry/car into Sorrento to see it

• Correct. Sorrento is a great hub with plenty of restaurants to spend your evenings after a day of exploring elsewhere. But not a siteseeing destination in itself.
• Private drivers do not get special access to beat traffic. In June, it'll be slow going. In Late April 2023 we saw so many people crowded around the bus stop in Positano that they were spiling into the road allowing only 1 lane of traffic to get through. 1 lane being shared for east and west traffic. It's not pretty.
• I'm 6'2" 210lbs. I had no issue with beds.

Additional data needed:
Is there any mode of travel that is better for the carsick travelers?
Is the flight home from Naples, or is it from the arrival city, Rome?
Can you fly to Naples to reduce ground travel time on arrival?

These topics come up every week on this Newsboard, and you need so much information that I'm going to suggest that you put some keywords into Rick's Search box top left (blue). "Positano Motion Sickness", as well as "Sorrento Hotel" or "Positano Expensive?". You just cannot get everything you need from a single thread of answers.

I don't mean to sound unpleasantly negative, but this trip is the ESSENCE of daily surface travel. People stay in Sorrento because it has the best transit connections in the area. People stay in Positano because of its upscale luxury, out-of-the-way reputation, but taxis are very expensive (150 Euros to go anywhere else) and take a very vertiginous ride!

Executive limos can't pass busses because the only road through Positano is two lanes (one each way), and the busses get stuck going around corners blocked by rock outcrops, and have to back up a little and swing around. Also, jerks stop their cars to take pictures, blocking the only travel lane.

Sorrento is built on a cliff. While the big hotels you mentioned have wood swimming platforms in the gulf (via the hotel elevator), there is no "beach life" in Sorrento. The beaches in Positano are pebbles, and insufficient for the summer crowds.

We were there in May, and it was already JAMMED.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/amalfi-coast-for-7-nights-itinerary-help

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/amalfi-coast-for-5-days-where-to-set-base-from

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/one-week-on-the-amalfi-coast

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/naples-to-sorrento-train-or-private-driver

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/getting-around-amalfi-coast

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/trip-report-2-weeks-of-day-trips-from-sorrento

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/sorrento-to-naples-airport-early-morning

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/how-do-i-get-from-pompeii-to-positano-is-there-a-direct-route

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/italy/pompeii-and-vesuvius-69e8366c-1e75-4a14-a0bc-0677269492d1

It’s been several years since we were in Positano and it was late April so not yet super crowded. I get car sick. We used a private driver from the Napoli train station to our hotel in Positano. I knew the road was curvy and eventually I had to close my eyes and focus on not getting car sick:) We did the same trip back at the end of our stay and again I had to miss watching the scenery plus take medication. We very much enjoyed our days in Positano and didn’t end up making any plans to further explore as we found plenty of walks to do and enjoyed some great food. We treated it as an R and R time between our visits to two other cities that kept us busy with museums etc.

This area is a victim of its Instagram success. Those perfect photos don't show the sad realities of the infrastructure neglect south of Naples. There is no fast nor efficient mode to get anywhere. Moving about takes patience and time. The commuter train Naples -Sorrento has all the charm of a NYC subway, less the air conditioning.
We used Aldo Limos for transportation, (highly recommend ) but private drivers can't escape the small, congested, curvey roads.
(Also, the beaches are pebbles and look like dirt.)
The area is beautiful, and I wish you a wonderful family vacation. Congrats on the graduation. But you need to plan for the realities on the ground to maximize your experience in a positive manner.
Safe travels!

I also suffer from motion sickness and avoided ALL road travel in the Sorrentine/AC with the exception of a car service from Sorrento to the Naples airport (out of necessity as we had to be there before public transport was operating for the day) and a very short bus ride from Capri town up to Anacapri. I knew in advance that travel on 4 wheels was going to make me miserable, and indeed I was on that ride to Naples.

The jetboats didn't bother me except for one from Naples> Capri, but without the engine fumes infiltrating the cabin I would have been OK. Short story long, I'd rely more on water transport than road...although what sets our individual stomachs in motion can be different!

Positano: honestly we were done with it after 1/2 a day. There was very little to do there if not into high-end shopping and just hanging out/sunning for hours at a time; not our style. Sure, head over to meet up with your friends for lunch or some beach time but it wouldn't personally be my choice for 4-5 days.

Sorrento: we enjoyed the town itself, proximity to Pompeii, short ferry ride to/from Capri, views from the coastal edges, and that much of the main thoroughfare is totally pedestrianized in the evenings; fun time for walk-abouts. If you do decide on that one, I wouldn't probably choose either of the hotels you'd listed: they're both an uphill climb from center (do a virtual walk on google map), probably an uncomfortable walk after dark, and taxis are expensive. There are some very nice hotels closer to center +shorter walks to restaurants, shops, the port. etc.

Salerno has seen quite a lot of love over the past number of years for access to high-speed train, affordability, and proximity to other locations around the AC other than Capri.

Yes, getting around is a challenge that I think is less about neglected infrastructure than terrain, and that the region wasn't meant to accommodate the number of bodies that overrun it these days. It's a "pack your patience along with your toothbrush" destination during high season!

I'll tell you what we're doing before halfway advising you guys...

We're taking the fast train from Roma Termini on April 10 to Salerno, and staying at a respectable & inexpensive hotel near their train station for 3 nights. We have friends staying at an apartment in town so we'll be visiting them some. But...our second day, rather than try to navigate public transportation anywhere on the Amalfi Coast, we've hired a driver for 6 hours that will take the 4 of us 1) to shop & browse in Vietri sul Mare; 2) to have lunch at Garden Ravello in Ravello and then tour the gardens at Villa Cimbrone, also in Ravello; 3) drive us to Sal De Riso Pasticceria in Minori for some of the best pastries on the Amalfi Coast, or so I'm told. Then they'll drive us back to our hotel. It's not cheap, about $100/person, but that price is actually not bad considering their competition charges much more. And this is in April, technically off-season but I'm expecting more crowds than usual but not like you'll probably find in June.

Listen to what Kathy says. We've both been to the A.C. multiple times, although I've only been in late February/early March, when it was pretty much deserted and delightful as a result. My advice would be...don't stay on the Amalfi Coast at all in June, unless you like gridlock. Stay in either Salerno or Sorrento--decide which quickly and book your hotel now. Both places have plenty of great restaurants--I think Sorrento has some of the very best food in all of Italy, with Salerno's quality not far behind. And make restaurant reservations well in advance. Like Kate says, visit your friends in Positano for lunch but then get the heck outta Dodge. Get over there early morning when traffic isn't horrendous, (SITA bus from Sorrento, ferry from Salerno) better yet hire a driver for drop-off & pickup. I guarantee it will be money well spent.

And notice we aren't visiting Amalfi-town, Positano or Capri at all. We've been there but also know it will be extremely crowded in June. Probably Pompeii will be a potential nightmare as well, especially if it's hot. Hate to paint a picture like that--we're expecting big crowds in Florence & Rome in April because of the Jubilee 2025, and had most everything--AirBnB's and tours--booked last July. But at least there you can find an off-street without the crowds. Won't find that on the Sorrentine peninsula, unfortunately.

By all reports, there's no shoulder season in the area, post- COVID. So April thru September is shoulder- shoulder in the AC towns. Sorrento wasn't that crowded when we visited, but it's technically not on the AC coast.
We were there May, two years ago, and the AC towns were already packed. I wish we had stayed in Salerno.
Good luck to all.