Salerno or Sorrento?

Stay in Salerno it is easier to get to your father in laws village from there.
Sorrento is harder to get to as it is only served by the Circumvesuviana and the Campania express (March to October only) from Naples and not by a fast train operated by Trenitalia.

We did almost this exact same thing in March 2015. Stayed in Salerno, then from there visited my great-great-grandparents' ancestral mountain village of Sant' Arsenio, about an hour southeast of Salerno, on a daytrip. In our case, however, we hired the owner of our B&B to drive us. It didn't turn out like we planned, but that's another story.

For yourself, it's a no-brainer to stay in Salerno. It's a wonderfully-vibrant small Italian city that you will no doubt enjoy. From there, you can take the train, which runs twice daily (but please verify as I'm going by Rome2Rio.com, not always the most reliable of information) and takes about an hour to San Michele di Serino, which is less than 5 km from Santo Stefano del Sole, and you can take a taxi from there, in theory anyway. Be advised that efficiency and reliability of transport gets a tad sketchier the farther south one travels in Italy!

From someone who has done this heritage-type trip before, unless you have living relatives in S. Stefano del Sole and can converse and plan with them well in advance, I definitely wouldn't go into this adventure blindly, saying 'oh, wouldn't it be great to visit the place that Papa used to talk about!'. If I had to do it over, I would hire a guide or a company that specializes in pilgrimages of this sort & can do the legwork so that the time spent in your ancestral village is worthwhile. Conceivably, they could take you there and back to Salerno as well. Could be money well spent, because...

...in 2015, we hired the owner of the Salerno B&B at which we stayed, who said he would drive us up to our ancestral village, and that he would do all the advance work as well. We sent him information and a fair amount of money too (250 Euro) to make this happen. As it turned out, the work was not done, the owner couldn't take us and had to have his father--who spoke no English--drive us there. And at the town hall in Sant' Arsenio, they didn't know us from Adam, had no knowledge of anybody speaking to them before we arrived. Also, I got the sense that they wanted money to get us to the next step--which I was not about to provide! We were deflated a bit but still had a great time for the few hours we spent in the village, speaking Italian--total immersion is the way to go!--and visiting the cemetery, where we found some family gravesites. I wish I could've spent a few days there to make some headway there on my own--it's on my bucket list!

Hope your trip is fruitful, and enjoy your planning!

If you use the Search box top center you can find some posts by a few people who enjoyed a stay in Salerno, to see the Amalfi Coast. You do not mention the AC, Pompeii, or Paestum in your OP so we can't tell if you plan time, or even wish to see Sorrento - which is not as picturesque as the actual AC. Month of the year makes a tremendous difference because of crowding on the AC. No question that Salerno is better for Santo Stefano del Sole, hours closer.

Remember that there are no "fast trains" at FCO. You take the airport train to change in downtown Rome. Frecciarossa (i.e. "fast train") tickets are much cheaper a few months in advance, but are tied to specific departures and not changeable or refundable. When you say "tour ends" in Rome, why would you be at FCO? Spending a night in Rome would reduce the risk of a late air arrival making you miss your prepaid train to Salerno.

http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en/Frecce/Frecciarossa

Aloha Tim,
You seem very knowledgeable about getting to the Amalfi Coast from Rome. There are five in our group arriving in May 2019. We were going to rent a car and drive from Rome, but I'm thinking taking the fast train to Salerno and renting a car there would be better.
Then we are going on to Florence and back to Rome to fly home. Should we take the train again from Salerno and pick up cars in Florence? Or, should we book the cars for the rest of the time and drive? Which is the best train line?
I should tell you I have driven in many parts of Italy, including the Amalfi Coast and Tuscany and Umbria, but never in Rome, except to the airport.
Mahalo from Hawaii

Our trip was great because of the advice on this forum. Thank you!

We took the Frecciarossa from downtown Rome to Salerno and had a driver pick us up at the train station there to take us to Santo Stefano, reversing the trip back to Rome a few days later. It's an easy and enjoyable train ride and reasonably inexpensive.

I personally wouldn't take the car to Florence (north of Rome); after the ease of our experience, I would opt for the train whenever and wherever I could.

garcande, you are piling onto an old thread, so you will not get the widest possible responses to your question. It sounds like you love the American freedom of the open road and a clean windshield, so my own opinion (that the long car trips are tedious and unrewarding) doesn't matter so much. Getting to an obscure rural location (the OP for this thread) is very different from visiting Sorrento. (Every night in Sorrento, we saw dozens of cars lined up in the heat to get into an underground parking lot on the outskirts, near our hotel, the Ambasciatori.)

You make two important statements: "end of May" and "5 people." Traffic on the AC (that is, from Salerno to Sorrento) is already bad by the end of May. (I will say that it is a far more scenic drive than even the four-lane highway to Tuscany. But the driver can't enjoy it because the driving is so difficult and the traffic so bad.) Since an air-conditioned Mercedes sedan (what our car and driver company happened to provide from Sorrento) only carries four passengers (and perhaps a little crowded in the back seat), you would have to pay a little more for, probably, a van if you don't drive yourselves. (Not so many three-row Cadillac Escalades in Salerno, I think.)

I haven't seen Salerno, but it is very far from Sorrento (distance and also time) . My opinion is not the majority on this board, but I found Sorrento to be an (attractive) purpose-built, reinforced-concrete, postwar RESORT town on a lovely cliff. I can't imagine any reason for someone from Hawaii (a much more attractive resort destination) to spend half a day getting to such a place for one night. I don't think (I can't see your post while composing, because you didn't start a new thread) you mentioned Pompeii, which is a much more "important: destination than Sorrento. People stay in Sorrento (we stayed five nights) for its transportation and daytrip convenience. I suggest you visit UNESCO WHS Paestum or something else near Salerno, if you stay in Salerno. Whether you are in Sorrento or Salerno, it would be very risky to go to FCO for a flight any earlier than 3PM the SAME day.