Blogs from Amalfi, Campania, Italy, Europe - page 8

That's right "The Mummies" arrived safe & sound in London & we dragged them off to enjoy the sun drenched coasts and charming swarthy men of Amalfi. Well, perhaps they just enjoyed the men's flattery, as remember "the Daddies" were stuck in the office at home. Mum, and her close friend Mary travelled over to this side of the world to celebrate Mary's 60th and visit their 'babies'. ‘The mummies’ arrived in London & took a taxi to our home in Clapham on Tuesday 14th August. I took Wednesday off work and had a lovely day showing them around our neighbourhood. They loved Abbeville Rd shops & cafes, and enjoyed being dragged (mum) around Clapham Common. Wednesday evening was a lovely extended family reunion where Chris & Ali came around and Mary's daughter Tania came around ... read more

This trip has truly been a masterpiece of precision planning and truly remarkable research: Remember all the fuss before we left, because all the hotels we had so carefully booked booked decided to deny all knowledge of our existence......? Well, just after we congratulated ourselves on catching the correct train from Rome, the (almost) correct bus to Latina with Senor Dickhead, the bus driver, and finding our way into Latina to the correct garage to pick up our hire car- we discover: a) the garage does not hire cars - not Hertz cars, not anybody's cars..... b) the garage owner has never heard of us c) the garage owner does not speak English !!!!!!!!!!! Eventually, after a bit of help from The Lonely Planet and several charades later, we get ourselves to somewhere that WILL give ... read more

Hello from Amalfi, where life is hard. Here's a synopsys (sp?) of my activities today: *Step 1: Go to Beach *Step 2: Lay (lie?) on beach (you can rent a sandchair and umbrella) *Step 2a: Pay bonnet-wearing chinese woman 10 euro for a massage. *Step 3: Write synopsys of day's activities and post on travel blog. Clearly, this is the most trying part of my day. Now, some thoughts on bikinis: Here, all women wear bikinis - one-piece bathing suits are few and far between. And for the most part (with some painfully glaring exceptions - I have photos), women look good in bikinis. I have a feeling that women here are just more comfortable with their bodies than women in the US - as a result, they carry themselves with confidence and manage to pull ... read more

My blog entree says Positano but our hostel was actually about a 45 minute bus ride away but we spent no time in our actual town. Positano is an expensive tourist place where the wealthy spend their vacations (reason why we didn't stay in Positano). The beach chairs on the beach cost 12 euros alone to rent for the day. We were unaware of this our first day and sat ourselves down for about 5 hours without getting caught. The second day it didn,t work so well. Other then the beach everyone is usually shopping. I did splurge on a bottle of the regions famous limoncello. I can't remember how it's made but it's explained in Under the Tuscan Sun and it's also the stuff Danny Devito was drunk off when he went on The View. ... read more

Today we did the famed drive along the Amalfi Coast. I had been planning on sitting on the right side of the bus to get the best views, but by the time I got down there, everyone had already boarded. Luckily, Chris offered for me to sit next to her by the window since she's tall and can see over me. The coast is amazing... at one point we saw a swimming pool carved right out of the side of a cliff. There's a cute miniature version of the town of Praiano set into the cliff by the highway. We saw another one of these mini-towns later in the week also, I wish I could have taken a picture, but the bus was moving too fast. The traffic on the road to Amalfi is almost as ... read more