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Once upon a time I was very much in love with an Italian, who was very bad for me. He was nearly twice my age, didn't work but raced and wrote about Italian cars. He lived in England but visited Italy often. One spring he needed to go over to Italy to retrieve some money from a small Italian bank that was refusing / ignoring requests to transfer funds to the UK. He invited me to come with him and tour the Amalfi coast at the same time.
We flew to Naples (you can fly BA, Alitalia, Lufthansa, Swissair, Iberia, AirFrance, BMI, Easyjet - the list is endless) and picked up a hire car. If you do the same, lock your boot - a favourite way to rip off tourists at the moment is to bang another car into a hire car (conspicuous by being the only cars on the road without bumps and dents) while an accomplice steals the bags out of the boot while you are distracted. Driving is terrifying enough without this to worry about. I could write another whole review about driving in Naples. But in brief: there are often 8 or 10 lanes of traffic; weaving in and out of lanes is the norm; don't stop at red lights if there's nothing coming; don't stop at zebra crossings unless a pedestrian is right in front of you; a few bumps and scratches are an everyday occurrence. Car hire is expensive in Italy too, if you're brave enough, pre-book with an international agency. The alternative is a train with four routes from Naples to Sorrento, Pompeii/Poggiomarino, Ottaviano/Sarno, Nola/Biano. The train runs from 4am till midnight if you are using Naples as your base to explore.
We needed the car to explore the coast and later head south so we headed for the Amalfi coast, avoiding the motorway (that would have been too easy) and instead found ourselves following signs that took us down roads so narrow people's washing brushed in front of the windscreen.
We followed state road 163 which twists and turns the full length of the Amalfi coast. First stop Sorrento which has been a resort town since the 1700s. Casanova and Goethe used to stay there. We hadn't booked any accommodation (the Italian liked to be spontaneous) but we knew we wanted to stay there the first night. The Ambassadors Hotel (Il Ambasciatore) sounded nice so we followed signs for that. Luckily there are brown road signs for every hotel if you're daft enough to drive without knowing where you are going. The very attractive hotel manager called me Signorina (miss) which means he must have thought the Italian was my father, and then gave us the most luxurious double room in the hotel (don't you just love the Italians). The room had two balconies - two places to watch the most beautiful sunset of my life across the water. The trees looked like they had been trimmed within an inch to make sure they didn't touch our balcony. And over the water to the right was Mount Vesuvious - still constantly monitored for activity which must be a relief to the residents of Naples.
The next day we set off for Positano. It's perched on the top of the cliff above the coast, as are most of the little towns, they look like they're clinging on for dear life, one false move and the whole town would topple into the water. In fact they still use donkeys to carry rubble from building works up the steep cobbled streets because it's more effective than anything else. The Japanese developed a long Hoover type system, the Italians gave it a quick go and then returned to the donkeys. God help you if you need an ambulance or the fire brigade. Perhaps the donkeys come with stretcher attachments.
As you turn a corner on the coastal road the whole of Positano is laid out in front of you, stacked up like little bricks, the road snaking down the hill like the longest, tightest grass snake. From a distance each house was the size of my finger, so we pointed at one that looked like a hotel and made a pact to stay there. Did I mention we were there in March? In March you can do things like this, the place is asleep, waiting for the hoards of summer tourist that gridlock the roads in their huge tourist busses. In March we tore around the treacherous coastal road like we were in a Bond movie.
Until the 19th C. this whole area was isolated and only approachable by going up difficult mountain paths by mule. This very isolation became attractive to travellers, artists and writers, particularly Postitano with its pastel coloured houses and tiny gardens that seem to defy the rock. We explored Positano; sieste'd; had a beer in town watching some kids trying to put a football through the stained glass window of 'Santa Maria dell'Assunta' - a small church by the beach; chose a fish restaurant for dinner; drank too much wine; and nearly died walking back up the near vertical streets.
There didn't appear to be anyone else staying in the hotel, so we breakfasted alone on the balcony in front of the misty mountains and Vesuvious again. Next stop Amalfi. My guidebook recommended the Hotel Luna Convento. Typical of the Italian monks to bag the best spot for their monastery. Francis of Assisi founded this monastery in the 9th Century - and built it into the rock at the very edge of the cliff. Consequently when you look out to sea from there, the water takes up about 260 degrees of your peripheral vision. There are postcards of the waves smashing across the road and into the front walls of this building. It wasn't cheap. £120 for one night, off season. It's probably a lot more now. But the Italian and I had to stay there, especially after we found out Mussolini had stayed there too.
We checked into our monks cell - beware American tourists - the doors are about 2 foot wide. If you can squeeze yourself into the bathroom - you'll find they have been updated a little since the monks - floor to ceiling mosaic, two showers over the bath, simple but stylish 1930s furniture. Every room seemed to have a balcony, some big enough to fit a table for four. Tear yourself away from the view, past the courtyard with lemon trees in the middle of the hotel, and go out to eat - there are lots of very reasonably priced restaurants. We had scallops followed by swordfish, lots of local wine and the bill came to about £30. Following on from the Italians example, we walked arm in arm around Amalfi taking in all the twinkling lights along the coast.
I'm going to skip the next couple of days as it involved a rather hairy trip much further south to visit the bank. Feeling like Bonnie and Clyde (although I hasten to add we were trying to retrieve money the Italian owned rather than trying to rob the bank) I was left in the car with the engine running and my foot on the clutch. The first day they wouldn't even let him in through the locked door although the bank was clearly open. The second day they let him in but said the cheque printing machine was not working, could they give him the £36,000 (sterling equivalent) in cash?! The Italian said no. The third day they wrote the Italian a cheque for a large proportion of the amount. Our bags were already in the back of the car and we didn't stop until we were 3 hours further north.
It felt quite a relief to be back on the Amalfi coast. We dumped the car in a Sorrento car park and caught a jet to Capri. The first illustrious residents of Capri were the Roman emperors Augustus and Tiberius. Tiberius ruled Rome from Capri and you can visit the ruins of his luxurious villa. Now I don't particularly like getting on and off small boats, but the Italian insisted we go to see the Blue Grotto (Grotto Azzura). This involves travelling on a motorised boat along the coast, until you come across a bunch of locals in little row boats. It is impossible to be ladylike when transferring from two moving boats, especially when they appear to bobbing in different directions. I am relieved to report I did not fall in. You then have to lie flat in the rowing boat, so no part of your body is above the edge of the boat (potentially another problem for those of a more rotund shape). Also lying flat, the boatman pulls the boat into a grotto by rope through a tiny gap in the rock. Inside a trick of the light makes the water appear to be bright turquoise.
Capri is the chosen holiday venue of the rich and famous. We didn't see any of them, but the plethora of Gucci shops gave this away. The prices everywhere sent us scuttling back to Sorrento and back to the Ambassadors hotel again for our last night. The hotel manager was still there with his twinkling eyes. The Italian wondered if it would be possible to identify and capture the 'twinkle' in the eye? We wanted to find somewhere really local for dinner, and after much hunting in the back streets we found a restaurant where Italians were queuing for tables and collecting pizza take-aways. I was starving and made my way through artichokes, lemon, prawns and rocket followed by a T bone steak, spinach and fries! Not sure whether I would have made it through the hole to the blue grotto after that. All of Sorrento was out walking that night, we found a bar for a limoncello - a local speciality of sweet lemon liqueur - the kind of drink that tastes wonderful on holiday and absolutely foul when you bring a bottle of it home.
Driving back to Naples we were amused by the safety (or lack of ) in Italy. Passing a little garage we were slightly alarmed to see them melting tarmac over a small fire on the petrol station's roof. Needless to say the garage was still dispensing petrol as normal. Round every corner there could be a man on a ladder across the middle of the road painting the front of his house. Or a great huge hole in the middle of the road that someone may or may not have put a cone in front of. Que sera sera as they say.
We found an antiques market in Naples, negotiating the tolls to get back into the city (keep some small change with you at all times as these tolls pop up all over the place when you travel north - funnily enough it's much cheaper to travel south). One last panini, and then we reluctantly flew home.
As you will have noticed, we ate and drank our way around the coast. Those with a more cultural head on, will want to visit Pompeii, Portici and the Vesuvian Villas. I could lift a whole lot of info from a guide book and pretend we visited them for extra points, but that's not my style. Needless to say, the area is steeped in history, roman ruins, amphitheatres and a volcano. Buy the Eyewitness travel guide and be horrified by everything we missed.
Incidentally, it took Barclays two and half months to finally cash the cheque. The bank it seems were rather reluctant to part with the funds. Within twelve months the Italian and I had gone our separate ways. The Amalfi coast was not our first or last trip to Italy, but it was certainly the most memorable.
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