Adventures on the Amalfi Coast, Italy

Mark and I recently returned from an 8-day adventure traveling Italy. We could not have survived the trip without our good friends and traveling companions, Steve and Sandy Hancock. You know that you are good friends when you can share deodorant, shaving cream and razors because your luggage was delayed for 4 days! I keep hearing my mother’s words in my head “pack light and carry on”.

The Amalfi coast is renowned for its rugged terrain, scenic beauty and picturesque towns. Days were spent “hiking” the small towns. Homes, churches, and business are literally built into or on rocks. Oh, our burning thighs! Stairs everywhere…we joked and guessed how many stairs that we climbed each day. We actually started to count them! We had perfect weather, not a drop of rain and temperatures in the high 70’s.

Each town has a beautiful church as its center with brightly colored ceramic domes. We stayed in a lovely little fishing town called Praiano. Nights were spent on the balcony of our hotel watching the sunset drinking a glass of wine and eating cheese and sweet grapes. The view of the Mediterranean was stunning. Citrus trees grow almost wild in this area and grapes are grown on terraced plates of precious ground.

Pompeii was simply incredible. This city was destroyed during a two-day eruption of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The volcano collapsed roofs and buried Pompeii under 60 feet of ash . It was accidentally rediscoved in 1748. Since then, its excavation has provided an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city at the height of the Roman Empire. Pompeii shows sophisticated design. You can clearly locate homes, restaurants, food markets, bakeries, amphitheater, and brothels. The perfect grid like design of the city showed advanced planning from the reflectors embedded in the rock marking the road to the channeling of water to homes and bathhouses. Simply a must see.

Following our tour of Pompeii, we hiked to the top of Mt. Vesuvius. It was not the easiest hike in the world, but we can say that we did it. It was cool to see the steam from active lava. You can stand at the top and see the lava flow paths going to Pompeii and Naples. Italy is having problems with air pollution and we were disappointed at the hazy view of Naples.

The funniest thing I have ever witnessed was Steve negotiating with our hotel for a private boat to Capri. They were having an intense argument over the cost in Italian and Steve was right there in the middle speaking English. Our boat captain took us through the large rock formations called the Faraglione. We roamed Capri, ate expensive gelato and then sat on the boat watching the sunset with a glass of wine.

We wandered through Ravello, Sorrento, Positano, Amalfi and discovered a national treasure… Lemoncello, a very yummy lemon liqueur. Fun times! Oh, and the roads are just a little bit narrow.