Exploring Positano on the Amalfi Coast

After our first day of driving and travelling and trying to resolve our missing hotel room, we woke early the next morning and I had to take some more snapshots from our balcony, as the view never got old.

Our plan for the day was to travel down the coast by boat to the small town of Positano, which is about 4 or 5 miles west of Amalfi on the same peninsula.

During our back and forth with Guiseppe on the previous day, he had indicated that we should go to one of the smaller towns along the coast, and take the boat there so that we would get the pleasure of ridding on the water and seeing the coast line from the ocean. So we got up early and spent a little wandering around the town and Deb did some window shopping. The Duomo (main church in Amalfi) is right off of the main square and as we headed down to the boat launch, we came across a group of Italian Boy Scouts hanging out on the church steps and getting ready for a day trip to somewhere.

The main road comes into town right along the coast, and goes right under a number of the buildings as it comes into the main square. You can see a shot of the road below, as well a picture of the same section of the road taken from the boat as we were waiting on the pier for the boat to Positano.

Waiting for the boat on the pier was also one of our first experiences with Italians and getting into lines. In Germany, as one might expect, it is always a very orderly process when you need to get into a line.  At times though you have to struggle with the Chinese in Munich who seem to have no idea of the beginning or end of a line and often just walk to the front and expect everyone to move aside. As we waited for the ferry to Positano it seemed very much the same and while I was initially worried, the ferry was more than large enough to handle everyone, even with all the pushing and jockeying that went on prior to boarding. Since this was a four day weekend, and we were there prior to the major tourist season, almost all of the people we ran into were in fact Italians and not foreigners.

This next picture shows the far hillside of Amalfi and you can see the road heading out of town to the right. I have circled where our apartment was located. If you do a google search on Amalfi Italy, most likely this view will show up in the first set of pictures.

We then travelled the coast line from Amalfi heading west towards Positano. The hillside are crammed with house and villas, some built in the most unlikely of spots, with the road winding its way along, passing in and out of the canyons, sometime high above the water, sometimes down lower. The hillsides also have large areas covered with black netting to protect the lemons and olives that are grown all over this area. We passed many grottos where massive caves were eroded into the hillsides, some of which were above water and some of which were partly submerged. We also passed several old forts and castles, that you can see in the various photo’s, as Amalfi had a long and dangerous history of fending off and being invaded by pirates and raiders from the Barbary coast from across the Mediterranean in Africa.

You can also see the precarious nature of the road quite clearly in this photo below, as it hugs the canyon walls and goes through several tunnels to pass through the various ridges. As you looked at the road from the water, and see some of the supports and bridges that hold it up, it is probably best that you can’t see this view while you are actually driving on the road. You also can get a sense for just how high up the road is in places, and you really wonder how people get down to the water from up above. In the 3^rd photo below, if you look closely just left of center below the hotel (the large white building on top of the cliffs) you can actually see a long and winding staircase that you take to get down to the water.

As we arrived at the pier in Positano, we took pictures of each other. You can see the very pretty town behind us and how quickly it rises up along the steep hillside.

As I have noted in the past, Deb and I have a fairly laissez faire attitude towards travel. We book a flight (or rent a car) find a hotel (for all the good it did us this time), buy a tour book, and head on out. So when we arrived in Positano our first task was to sit down, look at the tour book and decide where to go next. Well, on the Amalfi coast next invariably leads up some long and steep staircase!

When I mentioned that it is sometimes hard to believe the nature of the road as it winds along, I think the photo below really highlights that point, as the road wraps around one of the ridges above the town. It really does not look like a car, never mind a giant tour bus, should be driving on that road.

After climbing up and down some of the stairways to get a sense of the town and a vantage of the beach and the ocean, we decided to head over to the Duomo of Saint Stephen, the only church in this little village. Outside the church sat several local folks, just watching the tourists go by, including the gentleman on the right with his dog. I had seen him earlier in the morning, with his dog and his paper, and ran cross him again as we approached the church.  I wondered if he moved around town, trying to find the best shady spots and passing the time with his paper, his cigarettes, and his dog. Nice life.

Inside the church, as you would expect, it was lavish and devoted to Saint Stephen. They were preparing for mass, including several young children with a guitar and a flute. Deb stopped and spoke with the director, indicating that her daughter once played the flute as well. He said they would play a certain song just for us at the start of the mass, so we came back at 11 to listen, but never actually heard the song. Later on in the day we saw the director on the ferry back to Amalfi and I though Deb might throw him overboard, as he stiffed us on the song.

We then spent the next few hours wandering around the stairways and alleys of the town. Positano is a major art center, and there were numerous art galleries, many of them very high end and very expensive that we wandered in and out of. Along each of the alleyways there were also all sorts of artists, and we stopped and bought a few small prints at one particular location. Around midday we headed back down to the beach and had a nice lunch at an outdoor restaurant that was located right at the water’s edge.

After lunch we wandered around aimlessly some more, just enjoying the sights and the warm weather. Finally at 2pm we caught the ferry back to Amalfi. This time Deb was in charge of the pictures so I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

Upon arriving back in Amalfi, we had a short rest and then decided to do some waking and exploring around the stairways of the area. Our intention was to walk from Amalfi to the town of Atrani, which was located around ridge our apartment was situated on. When Guiseppe had shown us the apartment  he told us a lot of the history on the area and also told us that you could follow the stairway up to our apartment all the way to Atrani and then further on to Ravello. So, after our rest we decided to give it a try. Most of the picture we have shown give you some idea of the scale of the area, but I think you can get a much better sense of the size of the mountains, and the precarious nature of where the houses are built from this image from Google maps. You can also see across all of the hillsides the paths and stairways that run up along ever single hillside.

Deb and I set out from our apartment and followed the stairway until we came to our first fork. It was a bit scary thinking that these twists and turns were not all that well marked and you could go left or right and who knows where you might end up. Additionally, I wondered how this area must be a night, as the stairways are in places underneath buildings and not always lighted along each section.

We made it across and over the ridge between Amalfi and Atrani, and got all the way down to the beach at one point. We wandered around, and then on our way back, took a detour to see if we could make it up the numerous stairs to a small chapel that looked so darling and yet also looked so far away.  We climbed and climbed and climbed, passing lemon grove after lemon grove  and while it did seem like we were getting closer, we never actually made it all the way there. I have included a photo that we took the next day from Ravello which is located on the top of the ridge above Atrani, and you can see the chapel and get a sense for the height we tried to climb up. We started at the ocean level just around the ridge and past the round castle turret in the upper center of the picture, and climbed almost up to the chapel which is the brilliant white building on the far right of the picture.

On our way back down, we met a local woman who seemed like she climbed the stairs all the time, and although we did not speak Italian, and she did not speak English really, she did make fun of the fact that I was huffing and puffing after our little walk.

It had been a long, hot day as we had started early so we headed back to our apartment, changed quickly, and then went for a swim in the Med. It was the first time for me, and although the water was cool, after our hot day it felt great to float and relax and just bob up and down with the swells and the waves.

Our First Day on the Amalfi Coast

On Saturday morning we packed up as quickly as possible and got ourselves a taxi to take us to the main train station where we were to pickup our rental car. I think almost every tour guide suggests you not drive in Italy and after only a day in the city I could see why. We loaded up our bags and hadn’t gone more than ½ mile before we were stuck in a traffic jam. The cars were not in any lanes and it was just a big mish mash of cars, all trying to get past some traffic obstruction ahead. After about five minutes of this, with scooters trying to wind their way through the mess, we heard a big bang and sure enough a scooter had crashed into the back of the taxi. I looked at Deb and noted we had not been in Italy more than a day and we were already in a car accident. This did not seem to bode well for us driving ourselves around. Nonetheless, after getting past a police check for who knows what reason, we made it to the train station, picked up our car, and headed out of town.

The first problem we encountered, even though we had a map and a GPS enabled phone, is that there really do not seem to be many road signs in Italy, and if they are there, they seem to not have wanted to waste much material on them for they are all tiny. We missed the highway on ramp since the sign was no bigger than a mailbox, but after some cussing and some u-turns, we finally found the on ramp and headed out of town.

The next thing we noticed right away is that you really are not sure why they bother painting the lines on the roads as the Italians seems to drive wherever they want, drifting from lane to lane and cruising down the highway in whatever lane or lanes they prefer. Really crazy it was, so you needed to keep a sharp eye out and pass the poor looking drivers as quickly as possible. We then came to a toll booth, again with no signs as to which lane to be in, how much it costs, nothing. Luckily we ended up in the correct lane, paid our toll and moved on. There is a speed limit in Italy, which given how poorly everyone drives is a really good idea. If there were no speed limit, as in Germany, the country would be empty in a week as everyone would have killed themselves by now.

The trip down to the Amalfi coast is rather quick, as you only have to drive around the Bay of Naples and you are there. I think we really lucked out in that we arrived there just before the major crazy tourist season had started. We ran into some traffic, but overall it was not bad. Our plan was to drive around the whole coast, starting along the north side of the peninsula, then crossing the mountains and driving the south coast until finally arriving in Amalfi where we had reserved a hotel. We made the mistake of not packing any food when we left Naples, so by the time we arrived in Sorrento on the north coast we were starving. We quickly found a parking spot, and headed into a nice little restaurant (we were the only 2 people in there) and had a nice Italian buffet style lunch.

The Amalfi peninsula has fairly high mountains that run down its center, and soon after leaving Sorrento we began to climb up and up, following one switch back after the next as we tried to climb over these mountains and drop down onto the true Amalfi coast. Finally at one point Deb said, “We should see the Ocean anytime now” and after just one more switch back we came over the pass and could see the Amalfi coast stretching away and below us, and the Bay of Naples and Sorrento and Vesuvius behind us (third photo below).

In the second picture below you can get a sense for the scale of the mountains and the coast, and you can see how high up above the Ocean that the road really is in places.  Double click on this and you can see a rather large sail boat anchored in the beautiful bay below. You can also see the town of San Pietro (a UNESCO World Heritage site) far off in the distance.

 There were numerous pullouts to stop and take pictures, so we did just that a few times.

In this last photo you can see a small house with a tiny sandy beach far below. As you drive along the road, you come to gates that pop out of nowhere. People park their cars high up above the ocean behind these gates and somehow or other, through what must be very long stairways, make their way down to these beaches. This was a precursor to what we found all over the coast and that is if you want to go anywhere on this coast you had best be prepared to climb a LOT of stairs.

In places the road is fairly wide, but in others you have to wonder how 2 vehicles can pass each other.  You are so high above the Ocean that as you look down and travel along is can be rather daunting, with th twists and the turns and the tunnels through the mountains.

We arrived in Amalfi late in the afternoon and had to navigate our way around town to try to find our hotel. In these little towns there is really only one road, and that is the main road along the coast. There might be a few small roads that head up into the hills, but they are very few and usually are dead ends. The road to our hotel went though the main square of Amalfi, which is both a pedestrian square with shops and cafes and restaurants and also the main road that takes you up into the hills. The street is so narrow that it is one way only, with a very long stop light that allows traffic to go in only one direction at a time. We waited and waited and finally had our turn to head up into the mountains to find our hotel. As you drove up this street there were hundreds of people walking along, with shops all along the way and not more than a few feet on either side for all of this to go by. As this being Italy, there were really no signs, so we really had a difficult time finding the hotel. We finally asked some people who seemed to know the area and they pointed us in the right direction.


Here are a few photo's of the road to the hotel which I took the next morning. Imagine this same location with hundres of people and a car trying to get through.

We parked in the hotel driveway, as this was the only location available, rang the bell, were let in through the gate, and then walked through a long stone tunnel and then took this tiny elevator through the rock up to the hotel above. After navigating our way along the coast, dogging people and tour busses and the hair raising turns and drop offs, this is then when things began to go wrong.

The hotel was up on the hillside, looking down over the town of Amalfi and the coast line and we chose it for its location but also because it only had seven rooms and seemed like the perfect location. The only problem was that they had no record of our reservation and at this point, late on a holiday weekend Saturday afternoon, no free rooms. We were simply devastated, and I was a bit panicked that in one of the major tourist locations on the planet, on a long 4 day holiday weekend we were not likely to find anything to rent. The hotel staff, which was composed of two younger men were initially not very helpful. One of them even claimed that there was no possible way we could have reserved a room via email and them not known about it. After a few minutes though they grudgingly admitted that the guy who worked the night shift (when we called and reserved our room) was not that reliable and that they would make a few phone calls to see what else might be available.

After 15 or 20 minutes of calling around it did not look good, as they could find no free rooms in any of their other rental locations. Finally, they made one last call and suggested we walk back into town to the Hotel Amalfi and speak to someone down there. We did just that, leaving the car and everything else behind.

At this hotel a young women tried to help us out. She had one room available, that had brown, old carpeting and smelled of being very old. This was very far from ideal, so she got back on the phone and came back to tell us she thought we could have one night here, and then 2 more nights at our original hotel, but they needed to get someone to agree to move as well. At this point I got my phone out and started to seriously look at some of the very high end hotels in nearby Positano and Ravello, thinking that they might be the only places with rooms still available. The young lady came back, with no good news as the other person would not leave.

Things were really starting to get desperate, and I could not imagine spending three nights in that dingy brown room. Finally she said she had one more option to pursue, and she went across the alleyway to an adjacent hotel and spoke with Guiseppe.  He was a middle aged man, with a heavy coat on on this warm afternoon. He said that he had an apartment somewhere in the city, so we headed out, with Deb and he in deep conversation about Amalfi and the area, and him leading us across the main square and up the main road towards the next town. We then starting up a long flight of stairs that it turned out actually went all the way over to the next village (more to come on that), but after 4 or 5 different flights of stairs we turned left, opened a gate, went up another flight of stairs and ended up in a small, but brand new apartment with what might have been the best view of Amalfi in the entire town, and it was only 100 euro’s per night.

Guiseppe then walked back with us to our car, drove with us to find a parking garage in his friends basement, parked the car for us, transferred all of our stuff into his car (with his baby car seat and all), drove us back to the stairs by the apartment, and then carried our very heavy suitcase up the 139 steps to the apartment.

After this was all done and we looked out over this spectacular view of Amalfi, I had to remark to Deb that I am not sure if we had arrived in some major tourist hot spot in America on a major holiday weekend that people would have gone so far out of their way to help us out. And with the view and all, it could not have turned out any better.