The Amalfi Coastline is another one of those incredibly beautiful places in the world. Thanks so much, Kate, for recommending it to us!
We stayed in the town of Praiano, which is situated in between the two more well known and larger towns of Positano and Amalfi. From Rome we caught a train to Napoli (Naples) and from there another train to Sorrento. In Sorrento Isaac bought bus tickets to Praiano from a very grumpy sales woman who neglected to let us know that the road from Sorrento to Positano was closed. Instead the bus took a very long-winded way, adding an extra couple of hours to the journey, plus a bus transfer, which we didn’t know about until the bus pulled up in Amalfi and terminated. We asked the bus driver if it went to Praiano. He said, “No, change bus here” and promptly walked away. We loitered around the bus station for quite a while trying to work out what had happened, where we were and how we could get to Praiano. We were so confused and we didn’t know whether we had just made a mistake and got on the wrong bus, or had we actually passed through Praiano and missed the stop? It was not until the next day that we found out about the road closure and that the only way to get to Praiano was the long-winded way that we came. So no harm done, we were just very confused at the time! Anyhoo, after much loitering around we finally found the right bus to hop on and continued on to Praiano.
The bus ride from Sorrento to our destination was so very scenic and beautiful (if not a little precarious!). It took us up into the mountains and through lots of quaint little towns perched on the mountainsides. When we hit the coastline, the sun was getting low over the horizon and casting a nice red glow over the cliffs, mountains and sea. The bus wound up and down and round and round many hair-pin turns, dodging cars, people and skooters at alarming speed, hooting it’s loud horn when approaching corners and looming right over the edges of cliffs! It continued on in this fashion down into the town of Amalfi where we changed buses, and then back up and over to our destination, Praiano.
When we finally arrived to our hotel room we were surprised and excited at how perfect our accommodation was. It was a regular kind of hotel room with ensuite – nice and modern – but the best thing about it was the balcony and the beautiful view over the sea and mountains looking out to the next town over, Positano. “Yeah… This’ll do”, said Isaac, cheekily. At dusk we got ourselves some take-away pizza, a bottle of red wine and polished it all off on this lovely balcony.
On our first day we were considering doing a hike up into the mountains and along the ridge line called the “Walk of Gods”. We decided not to as there were dark clouds looming around the top of the mountains that pretty much stuck around the majority of the time we were there. It was still perfectly sunny and we didn’t have an overcast day until the day we left, however we were unsure about going up into the mountains where the weather could close in on us. Instead we trotted on down to the beach and relaxed in the sun. Even though the water did not seem far from where we were, we had to go down many, many flights of stairs to get there and let me tell you it was quite a work-out getting back up again. Like Cinque Terre all over again!
On the second day we hired two scooters to explore the coastline a bit. Well, I am so glad that we took a course to get our motorbike license before leaving Australia because without that training, I’m sure the scooter and I would have tipped over several times! It was a heavy scooter and there were many hair-pin turns. Something that people may not realise about riding a heavy scooter or motorbike is that if you go slowly around a hair-pin turn or on a u-turn, and you don’t turn your head and look where you want to be, as sure as night follows day, the bike’s weight will pull you down and you and the bike together will topple over onto the road. Luckily this did not happen to either of us, but we had some near misses with cars and what-not.
The Amalfi coastline is busy with cars, bikes, scooters and buses. The buses take up the whole road when going around corners. The Italians wizz around on their scooters with such confidence and speed because they’ve been doing it all their lives. Going through towns was the worst part because there was so much more traffic. We stopped in Positano to look around and also to find a laundromat as we had run out of clean clothes. Even though we had scooters we still managed to get a great deal of exercise that day! We parked the scooters just out of town and walked in because it was too stressful to try and park closer. Then we walked around until we found the tourist office, and then made our way up another million steps halfway up the mountain to the laundromat. The Amalfi Coast is like Cinque Terre in that you get very fit just getting around. With our washing done and out of the way, we got back on the scooters and rode past Praiano and to Amalfi for a late lunch. Then on to Ravello, the next town after Amalfi. We got off the scooters and explored each place.
I’m glad we hired the scooters but I’m not sure if I would do it again, not on the Amalfi Coast anyway. There were times when I found it quite fun and exhilarating leaning into the corners and picking up speed. However, for the entire time, I was riddled with such anxiety that it almost wasn’t worth it. I was constantly fearful of buses lumbering around corners on our side of the road and busy intersections with cars and bikes and people everywhere. So on one hand, the adrenaline was great and I was quite excited and enjoying the ride, but on the other hand I was freaking out about us potentially killing ourselves! The result was a horrible churning in my stomach, with the two opposite feelings jostling for attention! Argh! I was happy when we arrived back in Praiano and returned the scooters. Isaac enjoyed the ride very much and had better luck at ignoring any nerves he had, however I think we were both happy to hand over the scooters at the end of the day.
It was a lovely afternoon with the sun setting in a clear sky and we picked up a nice cold bottle of beer and sat up on the roof terrace in our hotel for a while before finishing off the day with yet more pizza and wine.
The road was still closed when we left the Amalfi Coast the next day so we were in for another long bus trip and train back to Napoli where we stayed for the following two nights. But more on that later. Ciao!
Our Photos
