Amalfi (
locator) is in the
Campagnia region, 29 miles southeast of
Pompeii, 19 miles east of
Sorrento, 45 miles southeast of
Naples, and 180 miles southeast of
Rome. (Amalfi municipal
tourist information site is in Italian) Sorrento is southwest
of Pompeii, and the road from there to Amalfi hugs the beautiful and very curvy coast. That is why we took a train to Sorrento
and then took the bus from there to Amalfi. Although some people like to drive the leg from Sorrento, Ron would not
do that, certainly not in our motorhome, and not even in a little car. The bus we took from Sorrento had a skillful and valorous
driver, who had to stop and back up several times, as did cars in front of us, because of the hairpin and blind turns, with sheer
cliffs going up on one side and down to the sea on the other. Going south, the sea side is on the right, and going north, the cliffs
are on the right. I would not like to be in the position of having to back up the motorhome with those hazards on either side,
to say nothing about the heavy traffic. Both ways, when we arrived, I congratulated the driver as I got off the bus.
The
views on the drive are spectacular. It was not only the natural wonders, the cliffs, the sea vistas, and the many lemon
tree groves, but also the way the towns are built on the side of the cliffs. The only thing Ron could do was take photographs
through the bus window. Fortunately the window was pretty clean, and the photos came out pretty good. We hope you
agree.
Although the bus driver was very brave, he also was not forthcoming about announcing what towns we were coming
to along the journey. As a result we were usually in the dark about where we were. The bus does carry some local residents
who are traveling between towns, but our estimate was that most of the people on the bus were tourists. And they could not help
but be as confused about our whereabouts as we were. Indeed, as we were leaving the bus at Sorrento at the end of our return
trip from Amalfi and
Positano, a family of tourists asked the bus driver if this was Positano, where they had wanted to get off.
Unfortunately for that family, Positano was well behind us. On the way back from Amalfi, we had had to guess, correctly, as
it turned out, that a town we had come to was Positano. We got off there to walk around, which is what the family
of tourists had wanted to do. After our walk, we got back on the bus to continue on to Sorrento. The family
was therefore faced with the necessity either to take another bus back to Positano, or postpone the trip to another day.
The
two largest towns, Amalfi and Positano, are very beautiful, with narrow streets, with very colorful shops selling, among other things, gorgeous
painted pottery, lemons almost as large as footballs, and
limoncello, a delicious liquour made of lemon juice and sugar.
Amalfi also has a very beautiful old church and a harbor with a pier and beaches. These beaches in both Positano and Amalfi
were filled with people lounging around on colorful chairs under very colorful canvas umbrellas.
One of the things you can
do in Amalfi is take a boat to the Isle of
Capri. As much as Ron wanted to see the fabled
Blue Grotto, we decided not to do
this. We were told that the way one does this is take the boat to a place off shore of the grotto, and wait for a flotilla of
small oared boats to take you into the grotto. During the height of the season, which is when we were there, the wait could
be very long. Besides, Adelle would probably have had trouble getting off the large boat to the small one, as
might Ron.
