Ahhhhhhhhhh-Amalfi

The view from our balcony....

We've just got back from spending the Easter long weekend over in Italy on the Amalfi Coast (Costa d' Amalfi). WOW! Is all we can say... It was by far and away the most stunning place that either of us has ever been. Literally breathtaking - there were many times that we were stopped in our tracks at a stunning view.

This post will be VERY VERY long and picture heavy, but even these pictures and words can do absolutely no justice to exactly how good it was.

First though, a small story about the logistics of the place. To get to the Amalfi Coast, you have to fly into Naples Airport. The Amalfi Coast is approximately 1.5 hrs drive from Naples. We looked into public transport, but as our flight was landing at about 8.30pm, all the buses would have stopped running by then, and even if they were running, it would have meant going to Sorrento and then changing to get to Amalfi, and this was a fairly significant distance out of the way. So we decided to hire a car! Damo rang up and booked the day before we were due to fly out and booked a Ford Fiesta with Sat. Nav. We arrived at the airport and went to the Europcar desk and they told us that they were all out of Sat Nav systems. Holy crap! How the hell were we going to get around Italy without a Sat Nav system? (yeah, we know all you old-timers saying "there was no such thing as Sat Nav in my day.....") ;-)

So we tell the lady at the desk to forget it and we go to all other 5 car rental places in the airport - none of them had any cars with Sat Nav, and they were all a lot more expensive too. So we go back to Europcar and tell the lady that we're going to go ahead with it after all. We go through it, but in the brief time we've been off she's given our Fiesta away to someone else, so she had to give us a Fiat Panda! Oh well, might as well drive a Fiat while we're in Italy!

She gives us a general map of the region and points us in the right direction and tells us that there'll be signs and to just go for it. Yikes! To top all of this off, it was Damo's first go in a left-hand drive car (excluding his race car), and definitely his first time of driving on the wrong side of the road. *Damo speaking* I just had to remember to keep myself closest to the middle of the road, and generally I would end up being on the correct side of the road....*end Damo speaking*

If you've ever driven in Italy, you'll know that this is an experience. There's no such thing as lanes, there is much horn honking and headlight flashing, and pretty much anything goes. It is absolutely crazy - luckily we purchased the Collision Damage Waver from the car rental company we're thinking. On top of this, it was late at night, we had no idea where we were going or how long it would take us to get there. This should be fun we think.

Here is the Fiat Panda!


So we head off down the Autostrada and hope for the best. Shite! A toll booth - we're not ready for this. Damo doesn't even know where the window winder is for his window. He pulls up about a mile away from the guy at the toll booth, has to open the door to hand the money to him, and then we're off. So far so good (apart from looking like idiots....) and Nikki is keeping a good eye on the exits on the map while Damo is trying to negotiate the motorway without getting us both killed. We drive down the Autostrada for about 45 mins or so and we're up to our exit. We get off - no problems - there's signs for the Amalfi Coast - Sweet, we're thinking! We drive off down the coastal road, and WOW - is it hairy or what? There were many very slow 2nd gear corners, and even some 1st gear corners - all this while there are kamikazes on Vespa's flying at us from the opposite direction at an absolutely ridiculous speed. We're not sure of the road death toll in Italy, but it HAS to be fairly high, surely!

Anyway, we have 20 kilometres of driving like this, so it took us close to another hour to get to Amalfi - brilliant. We're here - now we just have to find the hotel and we're home and hosed. Mmmhmm? OooooKkkkkaaaaayyyy! Where is it? Surely we can just ask someone. "Head 3 kilometres down the road" some lady tells us in very broken english (we can't complain though - her English was better than our Italian....) so we head straight down the road for about 5 k's - don't see it. Wait! There was an intersection back there - perhaps we had to go off and up that road - yep that must be it. We turn around, go back another 5 k and then turn off and go up the side road. Bearing in mind that it is now about 11:30 at night on very dark road in the middle of nowheresville, Italy. On the side road we see a place that has all of these pretty lights - that might be our hotel we think - but there's no sign so we keep going for about another 2 k. Another intersection. We're about to get very lost. We decide to head back to where all the pretty lights were and see if we can find someone to ask there. We go back the 2 k - we don't find anyone, but we do find that the lights were actually a graveyard. Interesting, but more than likely, not our accommodation. We head back up the hill as we're certain that we're on the right track. We end up finding a hotel and ask in there if they know where it is - we get a relatively detailed answer, and we were on the right track - we just didn't go far enough. We head off, and then about 5 k further up the road we see a big ass sign that says "Excelsior". We were so excited!!!!! We'd made it, and we hadn't gotten killed - 2 extremely large achievements considering.

Hotel Grand Excelsior in Amalfi

So that was our journey there. We did a fair bit more driving over the course of the 4 days, and Damo reckons that you get used to it. By the end of it he was doing all sorts of crazy moves, just like the locals. You really do have to be not quite right in the head to drive in Italy. Damo fit right in. ;-)

We checked in, and Damo decided that he could use a drink after a drive like that - so we head down to the bar at about midnight-ish, and meet the barman there - Maurizio. What we haven't mentioned thus far was the hotel itself - it was AWESOME - it was straight out of a 1960's Sean Connery James Bond film. Maurizio was wearing a suit and a black bowtie and looking generally very suave. We had a drink and mentioned to the barman that we hadn't had anything to eat (but we hadn't thought any more about it), and he goes off to get us our drinks and comes back with a couple of ham and cheese sandwiches for us that he just made for us. It was so nice of him. We'd heard that the Italian people can be quite rude to tourists, but thus far this didn't seem to be the case.

We finished off, tipped Maurizio and went up to our room and this is what we were greeted by:

What a brilliant place - it was soooooo Italian. And the view........ WOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!

The balcony itself...

Anyway, unpacked and went to bed for the night ready to get up early the next day to check out Amalfi. The Amalfi Coast is an entire region on a peninsula just south of Napoli. It's reknowned for it's lemons, well apart from it's amazing scenery. Amalfi itself is a cool little town, certainly not the largest town on the peninsula (that would probably be Sorrento, followed by Positano), and it seems to be a lot less touristy than some of the other towns, and because of this the locals seemed to be a lot nicer.

Next day we woke up and asked about the best way to check out Amalfi, and we were told there was a hike that we could take down to the town from our hotel down the "steps" which would be about a 1 or 1.5 hr walk which sounded just dandy to us - we'll go and check it out - on our way we passed about 1,000 Fiat 500's and Damo has decided that he wants one.

Just like this...

On our way down the steps

Nikki picking a wild flower

In Amalfi village during the day

As we were walking up the hill, we were stopping and taking photos and one of the locals, an old fella, asked us if we wanted our picture taken - well we think that's what he was asking - it could've been anything - anyway, we gave him Nikki's camera and he kept holding it up to try and look through the viewfinder, and he didn't understand that because it had the big screen on the back that it didn't have a viewfinder - the whole situation was hilarious because we couldn't explain to him, but anyway he ended up just aiming it in our general direction and this is the result:



It turned out great. He wouldn't hold still after he'd taken the photo, but this is a picture of him from behind as he was walking into his house.

We continued on up the hill and were just captivated by the view. We would urge anyone that if you ever have the possibility to go here in your lifetime, you should do everything you can to make it happen. Eventually we got to Pogeroa which was at the top of the hill, and had a small little village with a bar, a couple of restaurants, a church and that's about it. (Well there's always houses....) Pogeroa was at the top of the mountain near us, and it was tiny, but the view from there was very cool. We stopped off at a bar and bought a bottle of water, and the lady behind the counter gave us a free postcard of their bar. Everytime anyone asked us where we were from, they would always say "Are you English?" and we would reply with "No, Australian" and their attitude would change instantly. It was actually quite funny.

We got a little lost at the top of the mountain here, and after asking a couple of peopel where to go, one guy actually walked us to the area where the stairs were (they were quite hidden). We had pretty much fallen in love with Italy by this time so we were in no rush to get anywhere. We were just enjoying our time wandering through the hills of Amalfi. We stopped and took a lot of photographs, and we chatted to a farmer on the way down the hill. Using our limited understanding of Italian and his limited understanding of English, we identified that he was a pig farmer, and that he was very proud of his pigs and he seemed to be quite a character. Seeing people living relatively simple lives like this really brings you back to reality at times.

The pig farmer's farm

We made our way down the hill to Amalfi and once there we wandered through the backstreets exploring the little shops etc and Nikki bought a handbag from a little shop where he made them on site. Not long after we decided we would grab a bite to eat for lunch, so we decided to go to what was listed as the best pizza joint in Amalfi. Damo was in heaven. He reckons it was strange because although it wasn't the tastiest pizza he'd ever eaten, it was still probably the best pizza he'd ever eaten. You could identify and taste every single flavour separately. Everything was so fresh. A LLLOOOOTTT of Oil on it though. We had a carafe of wine with lunch, and all in all it was nothing short of superb.

We kept wandering around for the afternoon, and checked out the coastline at Amalfi and the beach etc. Just had a generally chilled out day. The weather was beautiful - it must have been about 22 or 23 degrees, and was enough to give us a little bit of colour (for the first time since about August last year....)

We found out that later that evening there was going to be a procession through the town for Good Friday, so we decided that we'd walk home, get ready and try and catch the bus back down if we had time. We decided that we'd walk up the road, but little did we realise exactly how far that was... (even though we'd driven it). It took us probably about close to 2 hours to get back up the hill and by that time we were running quite late for the procession.

As we were walking up the hill avoiding all of the crazy drivers, we were quite stuffed by the time we got to near the top. We were walking past some locals and said 'buon giorno' and we made a flagging motion at our face and they asked us if we wanted a lift up the hill - they weren't even in their car!!!!! It was amazing. It was another example of how friendly the people were in this region, and we were both quite overwhelmed by it.

We got back to the hotel (later than we were expecting), and we decided that we'd just drive down to the town and park about a kilometre out of Amalfi itself so we didn't have to worry about trying to get a park on one of the biggest nights of the year.

This worked out fine and we got back to town just in time to see the start of the procession. It was crazy and it was sort of like a pagan ritual - all of the people involved were dressed up like Ku Klux Klan members. All of the lights in the city were turned off, and only big burning candles that were hung up were the only light. It was all very surreal and cool.

Here are some photos of it.

Walking back to the hotel after the procession... (Amalfi by night)

Anyway we get back to the hotel that night and we were stuffed, so we went straight to bed.

Woke up on Saturday morning and had a leisurely breakfast in the restaurant - all of the waiters were wearing white tuxedos and black ties as per usual. It was very formal and cool. This day we decided we'd head off to the Isle of Capri. To get there we had to drive to Sorrento which was about a 1.5 hour drive away along very windy coastal roads as described earlier. It was quite the hair-raising trip, with many tourist coaches coming the opposite direction on the roads that weren't wide enough for 2 cars let along a car and a coach. But we got there and we didn't break the car again - mission accomplished. After crawling through traffic in Sorrento for what seemed like ages, we then had the fun task of attempting to find a park - no hope. It took us close to an hour just to find a car park (which ended up costing us €18). We made our way to the Grand Marina and bought our tickets for the ferry to the Isle of Capri. While we waited for the next ferry we decided to go and grab a bite to eat - Pizza again for Damo! ;-) The ferry route.... (From Sorrento on the right to Capri)

The weather once again was amazing, and we were on a ferry in the Bay of Naples - we couldn't help thinking how lucky we were. The coastline from the water was even more spectacular, and the colour of the water was clear near the edges fading to a dark azure the deeper it got. The jagged coastline jutting straight up out of the water into mountains on the water's edge was a sight to behold. We'd decided that once we got to Capri we were going to go on a tour of the Grotta Azzurra (Blue Grotto) which is a very cool underwater cave. Prior to going on this we grabbed a lemon gelati and just sat and absorbed the Marina Piccola where we had landed from the ferry.

Marina Piccola at Capri

We bought our tickets for the Blue Grotto and boarded our launch out to the area. The Italians here weren't really very friendly though, but we did meet a lovely Swedish lady on our boat (Annalaina?[sp?]). So we were taken out to the Blue Grotto and found that we'd have to board a smaller launch that holds only three people and the guy who rows it. We were on board this, and there was a large swell, it was rocking side to side, we were very close to the water, and then all of a sudden we're told that we've got to stump up an additional €9 each. Annalaina didn't have any money with her, so while Damo was lying on the floor of this dodgy row-boat that was getting thrown around in the water like a sock in a washing machine we decide it would be best to just pay up and get on with it. We sort of realised that it was money we were meant to pay, but it was a very disorganised set up.

We're rowing over to the very small entry of the Blue Grotto and we're told to lie on the floor of the boat so that we can get through the entry - the hole was that small! We get inside and it was pretty impressive. It was a cave that was illuminated completely blue once inside, and the guy rowing our boat started singing in Italian - it was great, but very expensive - we were probably inside for maybe 4 minutes total and the whole journey cost us €19 each! Never mind though - it was quite cool!

The pay boat

We caught the larger boat back to the Marina Piccola and on the way back we ended up towing 5 of the row boats back because it must have been the end of the day for them.

Our launch towing back the rowboats

From Marina Piccola we decided to board the Funicolare (Tram) to get up to the main area of Capri to check out the old square and boutique stores and just generally have a wander around - it was excellent because it was quite high up so once again the view was sublime. Many palm trees, and old clay pots with the azure backdrop of the Bay of Naples make for spectacular scenery, there can be doubt of it.

Palms and Clay pots...

We went and had a coffee (finally we could get some decent coffee - the coffee in the UK is generally very crap) and a dessert at one of the restaurants in the old square and just sat and enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere and the beautiful Italian sunshine. It was amazing.

The old square at Capri

From here we boarded the ferry back to Sorrento as we didn't want to be travelling too late at night, and watched a beautiful sunset over the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was nothing short of astonishing.

Looking back at Capri

The sunset over the Tyrrhenian Sea

We made our way back to the apartment in Amalfi and decided that we'd go down to the town for dinner, so we went and got ready and headed off down to the township for dinner. We found this little restaurant in the 'old square' area of Amalfi called Risto. Anyone who goes to Amalfi MUST dine here. We both had the Chef's special, and it was the best pasta that either of us had ever eaten. Their Garlic Bread was excellent too, and they also recommended a great red to have with dinner as well.

The next morning we woke up and we'd decided that we'd try and have a lazy day chilling out in the hotel, which turned out just as well as Damo woke up a little bit crook. We lazed on some sun lounges on the balcony all morning, just soaking up the sun, and by early afternoon we were a little bored so we decided we'd go to Positano, which is a larger town that you can catch the ferry to from Amalfi.

The ferry ride was brilliant, but Positano was sensational. It's a really cool little town, with heaps of little back alleys etc. It was very odd, but we think they may have had an open sewer next to one of the back alleys. Apart from that though, the view from the top of Positano was amazing. We would probably recommend that if you were going to stay at the Amalfi Coast, that this place would have to be high on the list of places to stay. However, the people definitely didn't seem as friendly as they did in Amalfi.

Here are some pics from our time in Positano:

We caught the ferry home from Positano back to Amalfi, and decided that we'd just go to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The food wasn't too bad - it was all very old-fashioned with proper hors d'ouvres etc. It was a pleasant change to just chill out at the hotel and not have to drive anywhere. After we'd finished dinner, we decided we'd go to the lobby bar and have a few drinks. Maurizio and Marcello were there and we ended up hanging at the bar and chatting to them all night - as the night wore on we decided that we'd buy them a few drinks for being so pleasant and forthcoming with information (they had given us advice on where to go to escape the touristy areas, where in Italy to buy cheap, but still excellent quality leather etc.) A few drinks turned into a few more drinks, and before we knew it, it was about 3am. And here was us supposed to be getting up in 4 hours to drive (!!!!!) to Pompeii for the day. Mmm hmm - that now seemed not so likely....

Maurizio & Marcello:

Maurizio

Marcello

Anyway, we eventually woke up at about 10 and packed our stuff up and checked out of the hotel and bid a fond farewell to Hotel Grand Excelsior for our trip to Pompeii. We'd been told of a quicker way of getting there, so we headed off, up and over the top of the mountain near the resort we were staying in and headed for Sorrento again, albeit a quicker (less scenic) way. Once again the roads were interesting, but we made our way back to the Autostrada no problems. We were quite surprised at how much poorer this part of Italy seemed to be - it appeared as though there was no garbage collection service - it was quite sad, and surprising that such a beautiful country could allow this, though we'd seen much the same in Kenya, so it wasn't anything new to us.

We followed the signs to Pompeii and everything was looking well. That was until we got to Pompeii itself - there were two signs - one for Pompeii pointing left, one for Pompeii something else pointing right. The sign going to the right had a brown street sign with it, so we presumed that would be the go - after circling a strange town for about half an hour we decided we'd give the other way a go, and we eventually realised that it looked more like what we were after. We found ourselves a car park, grabbed a bite to eat for lunch (Damo had pizza again... ;-) ) and went to make our way into the ancient city itself - little did we realise that you couldn't use card facilities at the ticket desk, so we had to go and try and find a cash machine. Yep - nearest one was a one and a half kilometre walk away... Damo left Nik and ran down there and back in the 24 degree heat - it was very pleasant really.

So after a lot of stuffing around we finally made it inside the ancient city - it was quite amazing, but I don't think either of us were quite in the right mood for something like this. It's a lot to take in, and you could quite easily spend at least a few days wandering around the ruins of the city - it is HUGE and full on - we went to the Garden of the Fugitives which was really quite eerie and stunning at the same time. There were 13 corpses and of these, several were very small children/babies. Very chilling stuff. The garden itself was very nice. There were also other places within the ruins where some of the bodies were, and there were a couple in one spot where you could even see the detail of their teeth and mouths open etc. It's wierd because somehow you seem to feel strangely removed from it all even though you're in amongst it. We also saw the tile Mosaic of 'Cave Canem' which is supposedly very famous also.

Beware of the Dog....

Garden of the Fugitives

Once we'd finished for the day at Pompeii, we headed to the airport for our trip home. Which shouldn't have been too much of a problem, except for the fact that we still didn't have a Satellite Navigation system. We headed for the city and were sure that the airport signs would be easy to follow, but alas, how wrong we were. As we were going down the Autostrada, there was a sign for Roma with a plane underneath it, and another sign for Napoli with no plane underneath it - what do we do? We don't want to go to Rome airport... So we decide to go to Naples. Unfortunately this took us into central, downtown Naples. We worked out soon enough that we'd probably gone the wrong way, but how to get back? We ask someone in broken Italian/English how to get to 'Napoli Aeroporto', and we were given some vague directions, but they weren't very specific. Nevertheless, we soldiered on. Got to another point where we (well Damo at least) was certain that we'd never get out of Naples alive.... and decided to pull over into a service station to get a map or directions. After trying for about 20 minutes to work out where we were going and also buying a map for €4, we head off again - we turn the first corner, and there is the elusive airport.... Unbelievable.

Anyway, that was our trip to the Amalfi Coast. It was amazing.

This past weekend just gone, we had Mel over for a barbecue and we headed down to the local park. Apparently over here you're not allowed to have a barby in the park. We had the cops up against us (again). Gee we seem to be running into trouble with the law over here a lot... ;-) Also, little did we realise, but public drinking seems to be completely acceptable in London EXCEPT for in the Hammersmith and Fulham Borough. So we were in the park on Saturday with a barbecue and some wine - apparently this was very bad! The police told us not to worry about the drinking (ie. they turned a blind eye), but to make sure that we didn't light the barby. We headed back to our place and had the barby on our back deck. All in all it turned out to be a bit of a disaster. But we did all have a good day anyway. Sunday we spent doing a spot of shopping for summer clothes etc. for our trip away this weekend to Cinque Terra. We are really looking forward to it - there are about 20 people going with us (all friends of friends etc) and apparently our room has been designated the party room! Cripes!

The weather over here in London has taken a turn for the better - on Sunday it was 26° and very sunny. We've really been loving it - it's also not getting dark until about 20:30 at night now too, so we can definitely tell summer is imminent!!!!!!!!!!!

We miss everyone heaps, and hope everyone's health is well!