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I had to start off this page with something other than Wow, so there it was. Wow. The Amalfi Coast really is a great place to visit. There are just as many stairs to climb as in the Cinque Terre, although this area is ten times the scale and size. Accordingly, there is room for roads here, even if they are only a car and three-quarters wide, or a bus and half a car depending on your viewpoint! We didn’t see or hear of any accidents while we were here, but I’m glad I didn’t have to drive myself through here, let alone try to find a spot to park a car.
I had booked a room in Positano at Pensione Maria Luisa, which got some great reviews on Trip Advisor. The hotel was run by a gentleman named Carlo, who it seemed had built rooms for rent under, then above , then over to the side of his house. That was the way it felt anyway, because of all of the stairs leading in different directions to different rooms and levels in the building. No nice perfect cube building here. You have to follow the lay of the land,
and it’s vertical in most parts here! There were only three rooms with their own terrace, but the other 9 rooms had access to a common terrace, which did have a great vista. The room we were given was on the lower level, with a view up the hill of other houses. When you come to Positano, you come for the view, so as nice as it was, we sought out some food and then somewhere else to stay. We checked out a few hotels, and ended up bargaining for the best room (suite?) in the house at a nearby four star hotel, for only 30 euros a night more than the Pensione. Our outside terrace was as big as the room… The Hotel Posa Posa comes highly recommended by us!
Positano (and the rest of the area) is one of the places in Italy where all the rich and famous come to play. The taxis are all Mercedes cars. Large chunks of the beach are roped off, for the exclusive use of those that wish to pay for the deck chairs and umbrellas. You can hire a boat and captain, for a sizeable sum of money, to take
you anywhere. Restaurants line the roads, and if they don’t have a terrace with an astounding view in all directions, they make do with putting tables outside on the road, literally a metre from the passing Vespas and traffic.
The roads here are of course, something else. I gave one bus driver a Bravo! as we got off from Amalfi. They negotiate the narrow roads in their 50 seat buses with ease, constantly sounding their horn to announce to the as yet unseen drivers and suicidal vespa riders around the blind corners that we are on their side of the road... Then in Positano, the road is a one way loop road that a tiny orange bus takes about 25 minutes to complete. Clare and I walked the route that the bus took once. It was a few kms long because of the climb through the valleys that make up the town. The orange bus squeezes past the delivery vans, pedestrians, the badly parked cars, the vespas, and the restaurant tables on its way around the town. It’s the best 1.10 euro spent, when you look back up the hill from the beach to where your hotel might be.
(Actually, the best value ride was in Capri, where these same little buses take delight in charging down these same little roads as fast as possible, literally inches from the walls, and the oncoming two way traffic. A ride at Luna Park in Melbourne is three times the price and nowhere near as much fun!)
Despite the fact that the town is set up to cater for the rich and famous, there were plenty of places that catered for those on a more restrained budget like us. Every day, we would stop at the local grocer, who made us rolls to order with ham and mozarrella cheese, and beautiful tomatos. On the first day we bought a bottle of wine to go with it all, got remarkably pissed very quickly, and went for a swim on the main beach. (We took more water with us every other day!)
As a kid at the beach in Australia, I could never understand why the Italians would all set up camp on the grass above the beach. Now I understand why; according to them, sand is used for making concrete, not for sitting on! The beaches here are (so far) all
pebbles and stones. It makes it easy to get dressed again at the end of the day, but boy is it hard work to walk on, especially for my nice soft feet that seem to spend most of their time in boots.
A few days ago, we caught a ferry across to Amalfi, and from there another thrill ride on the bus up the hill to Ravello. Actually, it’s more like up the side of the cliff. Ravello was a great place to visit, with some truly stunning views of the houses and beaches far below. Villa Cimbrone was a roman villa from centuries ago, that was reinstated a hundred years ago back to its full glory. Dad raved about the gardens here, and I can see why. At the end of the gardens is what is known as the Terrace of Infinity, which lived up to it’s name. The path leads to a railing that is right at the edge of a sheer vertical drop of a few hundred metres to the terraces of houses below. For most of the time we were on this coast, there has been a constant layer of low cloud, but today this
haze served to totally obscure the border between the ocean and the sky. It’s hard to see this in a flat, two dimensional photo, but the curvature of my wide angle lens in the picture shows the horizon
and also straight down.
We also visited the gardens of Villa Rufolo. I can’t remember the story behind this place, other than it too is centuries old, but it too had some truly stunning views, and some nice gardens to enjoy them from.
We loved the coast so much that we went back to the hotel and arranged to stay another day. We took the ferry back to Amalfi, with our packed deli lunch again, and then took a small tour to the Grotto Smeralda, which is a cave that also has an entrance to the sea that is underwater. From inside the cave, you get a brilliant blue glow from the (sun)light appearing from below the waterline. Very cool. We arranged for the boat to drop us off at a small beach, and we had a few hours of jellyfish-free time to ourselves. (There were thousands of jellyfish at Positano and Capri from our second day there. Just ask Clare
how much they hurt…)
It would be wrong for me not to mention the lemons. The area is famous for growing lemons that are very tasty, and as big as, well, melons! The pottery sold in shops features them, and hey, you can even buy lemon flavoured chocolate. Clare’s biggest find, however, was Limoncello. Made with 95%!p(MISSING)ure alcohol, water, sugar, and the
skin of six lemons, this is the local rocket fuel at 35%! (MISSING)I’m nursing a (lemon sized- the local ones) hangover as a result of sharing half a bottle with her last night. Not pretty.
A few very brief days in Rome, and I’m off to Greece!
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Jennie Jones
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Photo's
Fantastic photo's Paul. Just makes me wish I was back there again. Keep up the blogging I am really enjoying the experience of feeling like I am(almost) there too.