Piazza Flavio Gioia

Whelp. We can't sit still for too long. There's a bus route along the cliff of the Amalfi coast that is pretty famous. It goes from Sorrento to Positano and Amalfi, two very famous towns. Why it's not called the Positano coast, I'll never know. That's a more popular tourist town these days. But from our balcony, I can see the train station and part of the bus station below and across the street. It's Halloween weekend, and that means All Saints Day is Tuesday. Italians get a 4 day weekend, and that's why it's been so crazy crowded here. I could see long lines for the bus from the balcony for a couple days, so we wisely decided to skip the bus route that hugs the coast and take an all day ferry cruise where we could stop at Positano and Amalfi for 3 hours each. Besides, seeing the land from the sea is better than seeing the sea from the land.

We left at 9:30 and were back by 6;30. It was again an unseasonably warm 72, which feels a lot hotter. Positano was absolutely packed with tourists. This was the last day for this boat tour. For the next month or so, the tour is shorter because the high season ends. And then the tourist boats pretty much stop, so our timing was lucky. We had no agenda in Positano, so we walked towards some stairs and walked up and up and up to get some views. Then we found the road, which is now a one way road, west to east, since it's so narrow. We walked down and past lots of tourist shops. You've seen one, you've seen them all..... But it was a pleasant experience, especially stopping for a dessert and wine. Three hours later, we were at the ferry port.

We hopped on the boat for the next leg down the coast to Amalfi. It was also crowded, but seemed to have a bit more room. We researched a place up a a few steps and near the church and grabbed lunch. It was delicious and not just a tourist trap like we experienced in Sorrento the day before. Afterwards, we climbed more steps and got wonderfully lost. At one point, we were in a tunnel and going up some narrow steps. A woman was doing laundry and looked surprised to see us? "Privado?" I asked. Yup. So we backtracked and circled around. And we ended up with the hordes of tourists on the main street and the requisite knick-knack shops and limoncello stores. We killed time as best we could and the sun set as we headed back to Sorrento on the boat. It was a great day. Tomorrow, we head to Pompeii. I was there in 2000 and it will be Deanne's first time.

More photos and videos are here.

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