Friday night – the road to Amalfi

Today we had booked a driving tour of the Amalfi coast. That was one of the main drws of coming to this part of Italy. The pictrure you see of the place show beutifl hillside villages like Positano and Amafi tumbling down to the sea.. What they don’t show you is the massive crowds there to see the same thing .

Our guides picked us up from the AIRBNB at 9AM

Today we had a great driver Oreste and a great guid Giovani.. who turns

out to be Paulo from Pompei’s charming wife. They were both great. Oreste is just about to have his second daughter.. Congrats ! His wife is from Ukraine

The first thing Oreste did was to hand us a motion sickness bag.. A pretty funny way to start a tour.. but our friends Shmul and family had made the same drive a few days back and the kids had all gotten carsick.. They had also warned us about the crowds.. but noting could have prepared us.. I think

Giovana told us that we were lucky, we’d beaten most of the crowds.. The road was busy, but cars were moving. It reminded us very much of the ‘Road to Hana’ .. more on that later.

THe scenery was spectacular…

Because of the beuty,. The crowds were everywhere… and we were part of the problem !

The first city we saw was Positana.. it was beutiful from a distance. We stopped at a small fruit stand to catch the view.

We could tell as we approached that the city was full.. the narrow streets were sholder to sholder with peoplke

Giovsnna gave us the choice of stopping and trying to explore the town with the crowds, or to skip positano and head down the road to a less crowded town

We opted to take our chances down the road

We stopped at another fruit stand and sampled the lemons.

Giovanna showed us this crazy rock tower that looked like a woman (Mary ?) holding flowers.. Very cool

By now the traffic was even worse.. busses passing us in the other direction almost took off our mirrors ! Oreste was a fabulous driver.. so glad we werent driving. Shul had driven his family.. brave man !

As we approached to town of Amalfi.. the traffic got even worse.. We felt for the folks trying to go for a run

Amalfi was as crowded at positano, so we decided to push on yet again. We heard the next day from our friend Liz that they’d foudn a busy resturant in Amalfi.. waited a long time to get seated.. ordered.. then after 45 min of not gettign there food, had to leave to catch their boat !)

Fianlly we got to the town of Ravello.. it was higher above the sea, off the main (and olny ?) road.. and much quieter.. still busy, but navigale by foot. We spent a really nice hour there… we looked around the town a bit.. but soon found a shady courtyard with a great view and no (ZERO !) peopkle.. we took our shoes of and layed in the grass and took in the quiet.. it was the high point of the day.. .. kinda funny that doign nothing with no-one around felt so nice !

We headed back to the square for a quick gelato (whihchwe had to buy in order to use the bathroom) .. and met up with Oreste and Giovana

next stop was Minori ..next to Maiori .. Min and Max just like my grandparents.

Minori was the sight of Giovanna’s favorite pastry place. it was soooo good !

Oh.. one interesting thing.. every easter theres a procession in Ravello where the towns folk dress like this for a procession. As you can see they look like klu-klux-klansman.. but it couldnt be fiurther from that,. its abotu love and devotion

we got back in the van then had the choice of turning aroudn and goign back up the super busy road.. or continue on straight to salerno.. We opted for the 2nd to see more sites.. Salenro is a big city.. but interestign to look at

And that was the amalfi tour.. I have to say it was pretty underwhelming.. and dissapointing. Oreste and Giovana were really great.. it was the location.. or more specifically the over use of the location that caused the problem.
the bggest impression was of a beutiful place that was overtaxed by visitors.. making it no fun for the vistors.. and (i’ll bet) no fun for the locals. It was so much like the ‘road to hana’ on maui.. a must do trip..we did 37 years ago on our honeymoon (super fun) .. and last summer (super not fun ) that was a solid line of cars.. and filled up parking lots.. (see here)

Anywhoo (are Alora.. as an italina might say) .. we got back home .. and decided we needed to get out of all these cities.. Diane, Linda and I headed out on a trial we found on Alltrails. First we had to crawl through the busy streets of sorento.. but soon we were climbing the hills out of the city.. we walked about 7 miles total.. which included a nice walks arounf stone foot paths, a great view of soreento (much prettier from far away).. and a visit to an ancient roman ruin on the beach. It was the best thing we ended up doing in the sorrento / amalfi area (other than seeing smhul and family and liz and jeff) .. we are definitely country people. not city people