It's no great surprise when a five-star hotel lays on live piano music at dinner. But when the grand piano is in the breakfast room and the serenade accompanies one of the finest wake-up spreads in Italy, you know you're somewhere special.
Caruso and Pavarotti, both regulars at Sorrento's Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria, would have approved, and no doubt Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe and the assorted European royalty who've passed through the doors of this august establishment. With the hotel's "Aperijazz" events now back again for summer, the music theme plays throughout the day too.
Posh hideaways galore may grace the Amalfi coast but in bustling Sorrento, the gateway to the area, this level of luxury befitting one of the world's earliest grand hotels is a rarity.
Views of Naples and a brooding Vesuvius distinguished a huge terrace even larger than my room, as grand in antique furnishings as the rest of the hotel, although the bathroom was relatively small by comparison.
The public areas, however, are exemplary, Michelin-starred Terrazza Bosquet restaurant, a huge terrace bar overlooking the sea and a charming poolside eatery with a proper Neapolitan pizza oven in its own citrus grove.
The location is unique and perfect. At the front a beautiful garden leads onto Sorrento's lively piazza and shopping streets, at the back an elevator provides access down to the harbour from which day trips to Naples, Capri and other islands are easily organised.
But guests transported back to the past by the kind of hotel they simply don't build any more - and which has been owned by the same family for 182 years - may well find it impossible to tear themselves away.
