Amalfi Coast

It's been hard to get away for a weekend since I work Saturday mornings and so it doesn't give us much time. However, Wednesday May 1st was a holiday, and so we decided to take advantage of it and go somewhere. My work schedule has lightened up a lot with summer nearing and nearly all my kids classes ending. So all I had to clear off my schedule was my Saturday morning class. Which I easily got covered, but did not go over well the school, which is whole other story in itself. 

We had originally wanted to go to Paris, but flights were just to expensive so we decided to do a trip along the Amalfi Coast. I had always wanted to visit the beautiful famous coast line, and funnily enough, before I studied abroad in High School in Italy, when I received my placement  "Revello" I went immediately to google and searched it. These amazingly gorgeous photos came up but only to soon realize it had auto corrected to "RAvello" which is one of the picturesque towns on the coast.  Two very completely different town. 

If you ever go to the Amalfi Coast: 

-Bring sunscreen and use it!

- If you get car sick bring something to help with the motion sickness! 

- Be prepared for everything to be over priced ( 5 euros/hour parking, 20 euros plates of spaghetti) 

- Enjoy good limoncello 

We thought it would be best to rent a car since the buses don't run so frequently and we wanted to be able to roam when and where we wanted. So we spent the first night in Napoli, eating the best pizza in the world, and then renting a car and driving down to the coast. 

Napoli is notorious for its terrible driving and we were a bit nervous at first trying to navigate our way out of the Hertz garage onto the highway. While waiting to take a left turn onto a two-way road, another car pulls up behind us and immediately starts honking. It was impossible for Luca to turn and so the guy behind decides to cut in on the inside of our car and bolt for it. In doing so, he clipped a man who was on a scooter.  Welcome to Napoli. 

The tight narrow roads along the coast offer the best break taking views you can   imagine and are also right on the very edge of the cliffs.

We stopped at Positano first, made our way down to the beach and then stopped to have lunch on a terrace overlooking the sea.

Positano

Afterwards we continued on to Ravello, where we visited Villa Cimbrone. This villa is one one of the most spectacular places I have been. There are beautiful flowers growing in every corner, it's peaceful, and the views are incredible. We read that the owner of this Villa was a British man who had been suffering from depression so he bought the villa to cure his moods. We thought it'd definitely help someone who is feeling down.

Villa Cimbrone - Ravello

Villa Cimbrone - Ravello

 We slept in Minori, which is one of the less famous towns that is part of the amalfi coast. And it was really nice because it was even more quite than the other towns, it wasn't as touristy, and we were able to talk to the locals and eat well.

View from hotel window in Minori

The next day we drove even further south, almost into Calabria, where visited Angel's Caves in Pertosa. This was definitely worth the drive, I had never seen anything like it. On the way back to Minori we stopped a Paestum, which has some ancient greek ruins, and three temples still standing.

And on the last day we stopped at Amalfi before heading on up to Napoli.