Amalfi was the first stop on our 2022 six week European Cycle trip; the twice rescheduled trip thanks to Covid. QANTAS CEO Alan Joyce had recently been slammed for blaming travelers for many of the travel / flight woes due to them being ‘travel-unfit’. However, I can attest that there is some truth to his his words based on our first post-Covid international flight given we fumbled our way along for much of the journey.

In hind sight, I would have planned our itinerary a bit differently. We had a long flight to Rome via London and then a 3 ¹/₂ hour drive down to Ravello, on the Amalfi coast. The last hour of the trip was rather scary with the final 30 km taking over an hour, due to slow and winding conditions, and to have this at the end of our long journey wasn’t ideal. Anyway, we did end up arriving safely and, more importantly, so too did our bags!

Our Airbnb at Ravello was a rather humble 3-room dwelling in an apartment block built right on the coastal cliff edge and so the views are amazing. Applying the Susan Scarf factor though, gives this place a thumbs down. There was no hot water on our first night and when we went to sit out with a bottle of wine to enjoy the evening view we found there was only one, rather unclean, wine glass. The bed and bath linens were all clean but all mismatched so, thankfully, we only have the two nights here.

Our Airbnb listing is called ‘The Window’ which I’m sure is a reference to the bedroom window. Check out the view!

We ventured out for a quick dinner on our arrival night by taking a 5 minute walk down the coast to Atrani. This sounds rather tame but, beware, you take you life in your hands walking anywhere along the Amalfi coast. It’s hard to convey the spectacular majesty of all of these little villages dotted along the Amalfi coast. The steep cliffs of the irregular coastline are dotted with villages, vineyards and orchards and, occasionally, there is a steep drop down to a beautiful sand or shingle beach. It is just gobsmackingly magnificent! We ended up dining at one of the small restaurants that surrounded the tiny square behind Atrani beach. Sadly, our first proper Italian meal of this journey was not one to write home about but, more importantly, we managed to walk home safely and without incident!

The plan for our one full day on the Amalfi coast was to catch the bus down to Positano, checking out the scenery as we went, and to then catch the ferry back to Amalfi and a bus from Amalfi back to the apartment. We would’ve been better checking the bus timetable before we headed out though as, despite the popularity of this coastline, the morning buses only ran every hour.

We needed two connections for this trip; a bus from our apartment down to Amalfi and, then, one from Amalfi down to Positano. We had a bit of time after the first leg of the bus trip to Amalfi and spent this exploring the area behind the beach. It was quite a surprise to see the beautiful winding lanes, set into the steep landscape, lined with shops, cafes and restaurants and so we decided then to come back to this area for dinner.

We managed to find where to catch the second bus, for the final leg of our journey, and this proved to be rather fortuitous; the kind man I asked for directions just so happened to be the bus driver for the trip and so we simply just had to keep an eye on him.

Any bus journey along the Amalfi coast is not merely a means of getting from A to B but an adventure-filled, thrill seeking event in its own right. I though that if I did nothing else for the whole day, I’d had an action packed day already! Driving the narrow winding road along the Amalfi coast takes some great courage, but, so too does being a passenger on said bus!

We alighted the second bus at around 10.30 and set off on the 10-15 min winding walk downhill to the Positano waterfront. The narrow lanes, much like in Amalfi, were lined with lots of lovely clothing and hand made shoe boutiques as well as art and ceramic shops. It’s certainly my kind of place but I’m not sure about Mark 🤣

We soon realized that the main activities at Positano seems to be to ‘see or be seen’. So, given that it was rather hot and we were too tired to walk around browsing the shops, an activity that Mark doesn’t like anyway, we opted for sitting over a long lunch on the beach promenade and people watching. It was also interesting watching the staff at the restaurant tending to the Italian patrons versus the American, English and Aussie ones. I’m not gonna say much more than that.

It was such a beautiful, albeit very hot, day that we decided to cut short our visit to Positano and catch the 1.15 pm ferry back to our apartment so that we could go for a swim. The lady who had given us access to the apartment the day  before had told Mark about stairs at the rear of the building that wound down to the water and so that’s where we headed. It was gloriously refreshing to dive off the rocks into the crystal clear and blue water as the heat and humidity had taken us both a bit by surprise. I had initially been worried about not having enough clothes for the anticipated cold of London, at the end of our trip, but now my concern was that I don’t have the right mix of clothes for this Mediterranean heat.

We had some quiet time back at the apartment after our swim before heading back, by bus, to Amalfi for dinner. There was a bit of time to stroll the shops and buy Mark some nice linen pants before having an aperitivo in the main square in front of the Cathedral. There was even the excitement of a Wedding which drew plenty of cheers and applause from the crowd but we weren’t sure whether it was a legitimate wedding or just a rather glamorous photo opportunity. After that we headed to ‘da Maria’ for dinner which my mother would’ve loved due to all the shrines to Our Lady. We loved it as well as we shared a lobster pasta special and a prosciutto pizza and those were absolutely delicious.

Our Initial plan had been to get a taxi home after dinner but the quote of €40 had us back on the bus. We had a big day of driving ahead of us tomorrow with a 4 hr drive down to Ostuni. Back for some more hairpin bends!

NB: please excuse any typos etc as this post was prepared with little time and with rather challenging internet and photo loading connection.