Travel: THE AMALFI COAST, ITALY (Positano & Maiori)

 

*check out my travels to Capri and Anacapri here first!*

After a few days exploring Sorrento, it was about time to head out and explore the Amalfi Coast. Day 1 was by car - you certainly wouldn't catch me driving along the coastal - way too skinny roads with fairly constant traffic and huge buses trying to squeeze past too! And that's all without mentioning the hundreds - nay, thousands - of cars parked along the road. It seemed like tourists would literally be walking miles into the towns, just so that they could find somewhere to park. It was insane! Needless to say, we didn't stop as we passed through the most popular towns of Positano, Praiano, and Amalfi, a pretty small section of coast which ended up taking us an hour and a half to drive through.

Indeed, it was only until after we'd lost most of the tourists that it was even possible to stop, at the small town of Maiori. We had coffee, a real ciocolatta calda, and a traditional Easter cake at Pasticceria Napoli di Nicola e Aniello, along with a little walk along the promenade, before hopping back into the car. Needless to say, none of us were keen to make the return journey back along the coastal road, so we found a much more central route towards Salerno and around by Pompei back to Sorrento. Much more tolerable. 

The following day, we decided to hop on the ferry from Sorrento, and an hour later found ourselves in the picture perfect town of Positano. Much nicer to take the boat there rather than brave those wiggly car park-like roads! First thing on the agenda? Well, coffee, of course. We headed up the hill, past the cathedral and fancy touristy shops, to Casa e Bottega. An upmarket cafe and bruncherie, this cafe takes full advantage of gullible tourists. €7 for a small glass of orange juice? I think not. A little caffe orzo it was, although to be fair, I suppose you were paying for the view as well. They seemed pretty keen to turn the tables after us, so we didn't stay long.

Like Capri, rather than spending our time in the main town, we headed up. A beautiful lemon-ceramiced balcony provided the perfect place to admire the tiered houses on the hill that are splashed all across Instagram (and now this blog). And then began the steps. There were a lot of them. I'm talking thousands, and it was tough - probably tougher than the hike we'd done the day before, and that's saying something! A solid hour of non stop climbing later, and we reached the town of Montepertuso. Honestly, there wasn't much to see up here - we'd gone around the corner from the views of Positano - but you could continue up to Buso di Montepertuso which I guessed would've offered some very pleasant vistas. We had to be back at the port for 2pm, so decided to skip it, but not before the world's most refreshing spremuta d'arancia (freshly squeezed orange juice) that was definitely well and truly needed. 

We walked down via an alternate route - still thousands of steps, but past an impressive natural rock formation full of stalactites. Pretty cool. It was crazy to see how far we'd gone up by the time we were back at sea level. Such a great feat deserved to be rewarded, and no better way that with a cup of ice cream. I'd read reviews about the lemon sorbet at Collina, which apparently came in a hollowed out lemon. They didn't seem to have them when we got there, but they did have lemon sorbet, which we got along with sfogliata, a puff pastry baked good that you can find in the pasticcerias in Italy. Tasty. Then it was back to the ferry and to Sorrento for some incredible food and scenery - coming soon to this blog! 

Bucket list item checked off! I hope you enjoyed reading about my time on The Amalfi Coast. I'm always in search of the most beautiful places on this planet - where should I aim for next? Let me know on Twitter @CiarasCountry, and stay tuned for my Sorrento blog, coming next! Thanks so much for reading!