The weather was as forecast for this morning, it was very cloudy at 7:00 AM when I woke up and looked out our kitchen window. We had no real plan for today other than not getting up too early because of the weather forecast, it called for a 90% chance of rain for the morning hours, with some clearing expected for the afternoon.
Stephanie slept in a while longer, and I had some espresso coffee and worked on the blog posts. Stephanie got up about 9:00 AM, and we had some breakfast, a banana for me with our dried toast in the packets with the really good jelly. Stephanie had some cheese and meat and some of the toast and jelly. At about 10:00 AM, the sun started to shine, so we decided to go ahead and get ready and take the SITA bus to the town of Amalfi. Then it got cloudy again, so we were less motivated. We looked at the bus schedule and picked the 12:20 PM bus departure as our target.
We headed out to catch the bus, right down the steps from our apartment next to the Bar Internazionale. We purchased our tickets at the Tabacchi Shop near the bus stop, and waited for the bus. It arrived close to on time, but it was pretty full and we did not get a seat, and had to stand for the long and winding ride. The trip was supposed to take 40 minutes, but that was obviously an Italian schedule. Today is Sunday, and there was a lot of traffic on the Amalfi Coast highway. The road is so narrow that the large bus had to stop many times and wait for cars going in the other direction to clear. Then we got to a control point at a narrow spot in the road where men used flags to direct traffic, more specifically, to direct large buses through areas that are too sharp or narrow to have two buses pass by each other. At one point, we were stopped over 5 minutes while traffic was allowed to pass by.
It was at least sunny outside, so we were glad about that. The scheduled 40 minute trip took 80 minutes, and we picked up more people than got off at the various stops along the way. Amalfi is only about 29 km from Positano, but it seemed to take forever. By the time we got to Amalfi, everyone on the bus started clapping as we arrived at the bus station there.
In the meantime, some of the clear, sunny weather we had while riding the bus was gone, the skies were starting to get cloudy after we finally got to Amalfi. The town is fairly small, we would probably never come back, it is nothing really spectacular. A lot of people stay here and go to Positano and other places using Amalfi as their base camp since it has much less expensive accommodations than those other, more popular towns. However, unless it is better and quicker on a weekday, you could lose a lot of time taking the SITA buses back and forth. It is only about Euro 2.00 a ride, the fare is based on distance and may vary slightly up or down, but if it was like today, painfully slow and crowded, it is just not worth the time to save a little on the fare. The ferry from here to Positano is Euro 8.00 per person each way, and only takes twenty minutes, so it is quicker then the bus. However, the ferry is weather dependent and may not always be able to run. I would imagine that if the ferry is not running. the buses would be impossibly crowded.
The sun reappeared and we visited the largest church in the city, the Cathedral of Saint Andrew. There was a small entry fee, but it was a nice church, and had a crypt underneath for St. Andrew’s remains. There were relics of St. Andrew in one of the small chapels in the main church, the main one being the back of his skull. The church was decorated outside with tile in a pattern of alternating colors, mostly green and yellow.
After visiting the cathedral, we went back outside and started walking up the main street to find something to eat. We found a small café that had pizza and sandwiches. Stephanie got what she thought was a Hawaiian pizza slice with pineapple, and I got a pastry type bun with baked ham and cheese on top, a sort of a cheesy filling. Stephanie’s pizza slice turned out to have potato on it, not pineapple, but it was actually pretty good. The potato was in wedges, and tasted like fried potatoes, but obviously looked like pineapple!. My choice was pretty small, so I ended up getting another one, it was really different and quite good. We both had a Peroni Beer with our lunches. It was a good time for a break especially since it was now showering outside.
We continued our trek up the main road, occasionally stopping to look at a store along the way. There was not much to see in the upper part of the town, the main road had fewer and fewer shops on it as we got farther up the hill. We turned around and headed back toward the waterfront. We wanted to get some Limoncello, and looked at several places on the way down before deciding on one brand that seemed to look more “official” than some of the others. Many were in decorative shaped souvenir glass bottles, so I thought the bottle for those was probably worth more than the Limoncello inside.
We had seen about all of Amalfi we wanted to see. We had decided to take the ferry back to Positano, wanting to avoid another long bus ride experience like we had getting here earlier. We had about 45 minutes to wait before the next scheduled ferry to Positano arrived, so we headed down to the port to go ahead and purchase our ferry boat tickets. The next ferry was at 16:20, so we purchased our tickets and headed to the end of the pier to wait. It was now getting partly sunny again, so we just relaxed and took a few photos of Amalfi from the pier.
There was a ferry to Salerno, which is south of Amalfi, leaving five minutes before our ferry, and it was going to be packed with the people who were now waiting at the pier with us. Salerno is another point where many tour groups originate from to visit the Amalfi Coast, it is less expensive and has facilities for larger tour buses. Our ferry was docking about the same time, and luckily, not nearly as many people were going to board to head to Positano. We were finally able to get good outside seats on a ferry boat for taking pictures, we were near the stern, and right on the side rail on the side of the ferry facing the coastline. By the time the ferry left, the sun was shining fully, so it was a nice twenty minute ride back to Positano. We were able to get some nice photos of Positano as we arrived at the ferry pier there.
Once back in Positano, we headed to the nearby bar that had the “to go” draft beers that we had found yesterday. We purchased two large beers and sat on a bench near the beach to people watch. There was a man on the beach that was painting with watercolors. He was there everyday, and today we watched him finish a painting. It was very interesting because he periodically had to stop to either let the paint flow in a direction he wanted, or to let it dry before proceeding with the next color layers.
Once we finished the beer, we headed to the ceramic shop that we had visited the other day. We had decided to purchase the small ceramic lemon tree, and possibly some other items to make the shipping charge more worthwhile. Stephanie and I decided we wanted a tile mosaic of Positano, so we looked at several and picked out one that consisted of three 10 x 10 inch tiles. Without the framing, it was much less expensive to ship because it could be packed in a smaller box. We added in our Christmas ornament we had purchased there to the shipping box, just one less item to carry home. The people were just so nice in the store, and so pleasant to deal with, they genuinely wanted us to be happy with our purchases. We also purchased the ceramic lemon tree we had looked at before since we had to ship the other items anyway.
We needed to find a restroom so we stopped at a nearby pastry store and used their facilities. Stephanie had been wanting to try one of the more popular Aperitifs, or before dinner drinks, called the Aperol Spritz. It is a clear orange drink made with Aperol, Prosecco, and soda water. It was a little bitter, but refreshing.
It was getting close to the time for us to go to Mass, we had planned to be in this area because the church that had Saturday night Vigil Masses was nearby. We walked to the church and Stephanie asked a priest there about the Mass, and he told us it was back up the hill at the smaller church right beside the bar where we had the Aperitif. We headed back up the steep incline, and found the church. We learned later on that this small church was having an anniversary, something like 150 years, so the normal Saturday Mass had been moved from the larger church to this one as part of the anniversary weekend celebrations.
We saw the priest that had directed us here from the larger church in the back of this church after we had arrived. The people inside the church were saying the Rosary when we arrived, and after that was competed, he came over to us and gave us a pamphlet with the readings in English, and then asked if we would go up and each say one of the Prayers of the Faithful, also called the General Intercessions. We agreed, and he said he would signal us when to come up to the microphone at the pulpit. He was not saying the Mass, there was another priest at this church, but he was assisting and did say some of the Mass prayers in English. There was another participant that read one of the Epistles in English, and others that read General Intercessions and readings in Italian.
After the Mass was over, we took the internal Positano shuttle bus back up to the apartment and dropped off our gear. It was already nearly 8:20 PM, and we needed to eat, so we headed up to our favorite restaurant, Da Costantino, up the 85 steps from our apartment. It was just too busy and expensive to eat down near the city center here, and we really enjoyed the peaceful and relaxed atmosphere at Da Costantino. We hoped we did not need a reservation, it was really busy when we arrived, but they had a table for us right off.
Stephanie had a Penne Pasta dish, with the spicy tomato based arabbiatta sauce, and I had a pizza capriccioso. We had our customary bottle of water and a liter of their house red wine. It was really good, and we were hungry from the long day. We had our complimentary after dinner Limoncello, and finished our wine. By the time we left the restaurant, there were only a few tables still occupied, it was about 10:20 PM. We asked what brand of Limoncello they served, but the lady we asked could not speak English. One of the customers waiting for a take out order interpreted for us. They actually make their own, and it was really good, but not available for sale.
We walked back to our apartment and I had some of the Limoncello we purchased earlier in Amalfi, which was not quite as good as what we had at the restaurant. Stephanie had a Jack Daniels, courtesy of Delta Airlines from a leftover mini bottle from our flight here, with Coke. We went up to our porch overlooking Positano, and it was a peaceful end to a long day.
Tomorrow we will be doing another hike called the Path of the Gods, it is high up on the surrounding hills, and we hope to get some good photos if the weather cooperates. It was about 11:30 PM when we finally headed off to get some sleep.