Day 127 A flight through Amalfi

Thursday 26/07/2018 (Day 41 SZ) Itineror Ergo Sum BnB Via Provinciale Vigne Sant'Antonio, 65, Pompeii, 80045, Italy

Up early at the BnB to get out morning coffee, I was allowed to boil the saucepan to make hot water to get. Our cuppa.... most don’t have a kettle, they only have little coffee percolators for one or 2 available.... occasionally a saucepan or some implement to boil water in if your lucky... most don’t have tea towels they have a cupboard above the sink with a drainer top and bottom and that’s where your plates and cups and even cutlery as stored permanently... you just wash them then put them into the cupboard to dry.... there is no base to the cupboard... just a drainer and open air... all have a bidet in the bathroom.... still can’t work out how it’s actually used....no toasters, dry few microwaves.... occasions an oven and cook top but not always both. You just never know what your install for.... any way as he was preforming our basic Italian breaky of a croissant 🥐, coffee, there was cereal surprise.... pretty basic and the croissant is always sweet... never savoury as we have them....so interesting the different ways people have breakfast... all very sweet here, cakes, yogurt sometimes... biscuits with jam... all of what I can’t eat.... I actually can’t remember what I had....

We thanked him after breaky and that was a challenge... as he talked none stop Italian at us none of which we could comprehend sadly... so out come google to thank him, packed our car and off up the hwy....we started out on the highway again, but eventually headed to the coast which this time was the Amalfi Coastline.... the road trip today is pretty long so we thought by breaking it up like this might not make it feel so not dragged out.... but we should have remembered that this particular hwy is crazy.... crazy, drivers, crazy car parker’s, crazy roads being so narrow.... crazy villages all so tight and squashy, bits and pieces placed on the littlest piece of land that usually hangs over or on a cliff face....

The road gets narrower and narrower as we near Amalfi itself, and out in the water which I couldn’t get any pics of, were about 20-30 luxury’s Cruises 🚢 all sitting facing into Amalfi ... unreal to actually see how many where actually there! The fact that each one of these cruises were worth millions of dollars just floating there...we wanted to pull up to have a closer look, but there was not a spare inch of Space left to park....let alone get out of the car as the traffic was moving far to fast for this tight winding road, that hug cliffs the whole way around.... motorbikes, small cars, far to big cars for the space they are driving in, then the huge massive buses 🚎 that try to run over anything in its sight and or other buses if they can... at one stage we got caught behind a huge bus that tried to pass another huge bus coming the other way... only where they tried to pass each other wasn’t big enough for 2 big buses.... behind each bus both ways was a ream of traffic.... motorbikes that were an impatient lot all trying to get through this two nearly welded together buses, they were that close plus... the were stuck between a building on either side of the road... so much stuck that both their mirrors were right on the buildings they were rammed against and nearly in a building.... they even tried to fold their mirrors in to allow more room, but no luck... in the mean time all these crazy motorbike were trying to squeeze through this tiny gap... so they could get through fast... finally the buses both had to back, back.... but that meant everything behind them had to back, back also.... as the tiniest gap appeared those darn crazy motorbikes took off.... unreal to sit and watch it all unfold.....

We then got to the tunnel we had had all that trouble with our hotel booking years ago.... I wrote about it on FB as below

“This tunnel for me has a long history! About 4-5 yrs ago we arrived at this very spot to stay at our accommodation I had booked on the Net! We had trouble finding a car park being 1030 at night we did manage to get one!!!the sign on the door said the piccolo hotel like I had booked! We knocked and knocked and knocked!!! But no response! The next thing this guy approaches us and in a not so easy English asks us if we are ok! He said it’s ok I am the local doctor you are fine! It’s like is this guy for real! Anyway we eventually tell him we are booked into the hotel here!!! He says to us but it is closed down! I say how can this be I have a room booked here tonight! So we phone the reception at the hotel and the doctor kindy offers to talk on our behalf as we as you know can speak English! Eventually the doctor discoverers that our booking is 700 ks away and definitely not here! It had the same name but different location! I had booked this thinking it was Amalfi! Long story short as there is more to it!!!!! The doctor organises a motel forces to stay at!!! He did it because years ago he had travelled in Australia and had some problems and some Aussies had helped him out , he said he was just paying it back! It’s a night we will never forget and seeing this tunnel even as quick as it was bought back all the memories of that night!”
There was a lot more to this crazy story but that condensed it...

On up the coastline we headed past Positano then eventually we found one spot to stop and I must admit it was a pretty good sight, but I had so wanted to stop earlier.... views over the bay were unreal...Especially with all the boat movement down below.... back in the car after buying some grapes 🍇 that were far over priced, but we are tourist.... then into Meta where the traffic is actually getting busy but it is due to it being a city.. past a huge cathedral where they were preparing for a wedding... on through past the Naples turn off seeing Mt Versuvius the huge Volcano 🌋 that covered Pompeii in 79 AD....

We finally made it to our accommodation for the night...only to discover parking was an issue to unpack... we were in a very busy Hwy where, the cars, trucks and bikes were just a constant flow... so poor John whose side was the traffic had to take bags out was dicing with death as the zoomed by him....

Finally the guy turned up so we could get our gear inside then he took John down the road to where we are to park our car... a bit away but not to bad really..

Inside I am having a mental breakdown about the fact there is hardly any space to put the huge amount of cold food, I have with me in the fridge.... their fridge is packed with other people’s food and heaps of breakfast foods.... so after I had my breakdown.... and I sorted myself out, I rearranged their fridge making sure I didn’t upset anyone whose food I shifted....

We settled in had make up dinner again out of stuff I had.....yep the veggie and mince bake... this time I added tomato and basil base to it and this changed the flavour yet again....

Off to bed another long, long day over...the long travel days do tend to make you very emotionally tired... and I am not driving poor John is....

Info below on Mt Vesuvius!
Mount Vesuvius has erupted many times. The famous eruption in AD 79 was preceded by numerous others in prehistory, including at least three significantly larger ones, the best known being the Avellino eruption around 1800 BC which engulfed several Bronze Age settlements. Since AD 79, the volcano has also erupted repeatedly, in 172, 203, 222, possibly in 303, 379, 472, 512, 536, 685, 787, around 860, around 900, 968, 991, 999, 1006, 1037, 1049, around 1073, 1139, 1150, and there may have been eruptions in 1270, 1347, and 1500.[19] The volcano erupted again in 1631, six times in the 18th century (including 1779 and 1794), eight times in the 19th century (notably in 1872), and in 1906, 1929 and 1944. There have been no eruptions since 1944, and none of the eruptions after AD 79 were as large or destructive as the Pompeian one.
The eruptions vary greatly in severity but are characterized by explosive outbursts of the kind dubbed Plinian after Pliny the Younger, a Roman writer who published a detailed description of the 79 AD eruption, including his uncle's death.[23] On occasion, eruptions from Vesuvius have been so large that the whole of southern Europe has been blanketed by ash; in 472 and 1631, Vesuvian ash fell on Constantinople (Istanbul), over 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) away. A few times since 1944, landslides in the crater have raised clouds of ash dust, raising false alarms of an eruption.Read more