Day Fourteen: Amalfi Coast

When I originally planned our day to the rest of the Amalfi Coast, I was basing our itinerary on one I found in my planning book. It suggested leaving early and taking the bus to Amalfi and then Ravello for the actual first stop. I decided that as pretty as Ravello may be, taking another bus after we get to Amalfi would probably be too much.

This turned out to be an excellent decision, since by the time we made it to Amalfi, neither of us would have been able to get on another bus. We walked to the Sorrento train station about fifteen minutes early, figuring we would be right on time to get a seat on the right side of the bus so I could take pictures. Not only was the entire right side full, but the entire bus was packed. There were two single seats available, each on different rows. I opted to sit in the stair well, with my back against the seat in front of me, and Joel stood.

The bus somehow picked up even more people on the way, so Joel ended up standing for the entire ride. He got very motion sick with the lurching and twisting roads on the edges of the cliffs, so he was very grateful that most of the bus emptied when we got to Positano. There still was no seat available on the right side of the bus, so I maintained my position in the stair well, snapping pictures. Joel got a seat on the other side and promptly fell asleep. By the time we made it to Amalfi, I was a little queasy myself from riding backwards for the entire crazy hour long ride. It was worth my troubles, because I got some nice pictures, but we were both very pleased to have our feet on solid land.

The itinerary in the book suggested taking a bus back to Positano, but neither of us had any interest in doing that, so we went to the pier to look into a ferry to Positano. We instead bought tickets to see the Green Grotto. I didn't even really know that there was a grotto in Amalfi, so we were excited to go. There were ferries available all day, so we figured we would go see the grotto, explore Amalfi for a bit, and then take a ferry to Positano.

The boat ride to the grotto was refreshing and relaxing. We arrived at the bottom of the cliff and paid the boat man an extra 5€. The grotto wasn't very big, but it was lit up by glowing green water, similar I imagine to the famous Blue Grotto. The boat man was really hysterical and cracked jokes in broken English about creating emeralds just for us by splashing his oars on the water.

On the ride back to Amalfi, we were nearly in a boating accident because a shmuck in a Sea Ray style boat decided he would try to cut us off. Really, guy? You're going to cut off what is obviously a commercial ferry-type vessel filled with passengers? I snapped a picture of him, after both boats had stopped, but you can see from the wakes just how close he was trying to cut us off. It was pretty crazy.

We had a lunch of seafood overlooking the Amalfi harbor and then took a walk through the town. Joel scared the crap out of some fellow tourists while taking video of one of the fountains in town. He put the camera in the water to get a closeup of the fish in the fountain water, and everyone freaked out because they for some reason thought it was his iPhone.

After our stroll, we stopped on a park bench for forty five minutes where I took a nap on Joel's shoulder and he watched the sea. Our ferry was at 3:00, so soon enough it was time to head over to Positano. The ride had beautiful scenery, but obnoxious people nearby. There were two annoying American girls behind us, and their spazzy Italian friend sitting on the bench next to us who kept getting up, sitting down, and otherwise shifting around so violently that he shook the whole bench. I kind of wanted to throw him overboard.

Positano is a beautiful town, but for some reason, I didn't quite realize that it was entirely on a hill. Our entire visit was just going up and up and up the enormous hill that is the main town. By the time we got a ways up the hill, I was hot and cranky and my foot hurt. Joel got me a bottle of water and found me a place to sit. The views of the beach and harbor from the hill side were beautiful and worth the walk, but we were excited to start walking back down. We stopped for a snack (my current favorite snack, prosciutto and cantaloupe, MMMMM!!!) before we caught the ferry back to Sorrento.

The ferry to Sorrento was a jet, which was very cool. Joel had never been on a jet boat before, so we enjoyed the quick ride back to the port of Sorrento. We climbed the big road and stairs back up to the town.

We wanted to go to dinner at the same sunset restaurant that we were at the night before, but by the time we headed out for dinner, the sunset was just peaking. The cloud cover was different than the previous night, so we got a stunning view of the sun right before it disappeared behind the clouds as we were walking up. We realized, however, that we were arriving at the wrong time, because there was not a single table available. We went down the street and had dinner at a different restaurant nearby, and really enjoyed ourselves. As stunningly beautiful as the sunset restaurant was, the atmosphere of this other place was very nice as well. We ate a good meal and went to sleep very satisfied, ready to get a good night's rest before Capri in the morning.