Trenitalia — The Italian Railway

I’m leaving Salerno, the Amalfi Coast, and the whole Naples region to go closer to Rome where my flight to Paris leaves on Friday. I’m already missing Naples. This morning I said goodbye to Martina who will be taking a ferry to Capri for a few days before heading back to Rome and then home to Hamburg. I passed the restaurant where we had our best dinner in Salerno and noticed that it was called Dolci Ricordi (sweet memories). This region of Italy did bring back some sweet memories for me and I made some new ones over the past week. Staying in Salerno was a great idea. It is so well connected to the rest of the region by train, bus, and ferry. From here it is easy to get to Positano, Amalfi, Capri, Sorrento, Pompeii, Naples, and Paestum. In addition, it has a beautiful medieval city center as well as modern boulevards lined with restaurants and cafes. It has a beautiful promenade along the sea, and a long and very wide beach which is rare in this part of Italy where the mountains come so close to the coast. A lot of people here speak English now. That was not the case on my past trips to the Naples region. Even the older woman who served me my coffee and sfogliatella this morning switched to English to help me out when she heard my awful Italian. Check out the photo of my coffee to go. This was one of Charlene’s two suggestions in the past to make Italy perfect. She said they just need to-go cups and window screens. Well, Charlene, they’ve worked out the to-go cups in a very Neapolitan style, but still no screens. I’m on the train now with my sfogliatella and coffee heading north. We are passing Vesuvius and soon we’ll be beyond Naples and leaving Campania entirely. I remember my grandfather (also Dominick though they called him Firp) telling me about the phrase “Vedi Napoli e poi Muori.” In English it’s “see Naples and die.” He explained that everyone should experience the beauty and richness of Naples once in their life. In other words, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Naples. Firp was proud of his ‘paese’ and once told me that the water from his village was so good that the King of Naples created an aqueduct to bring it from the little town of Airola to the palace at Caserta. I checked that out on my trip in 2015, and Firp was right. He added that the king wanted only the best in Naples because that’s how life should be. Dolci Ricordi.Read more