We caught a bus for the Mestre station at 7 and hung out for a bit before we left. The guy at the ticket counter was really nice! He printed out the two tickets we needed and couldn’t figure out how to do ourselves at the self-service ticket thing. We’ve had a couple interesting interactions with people at train stations, usually involving them not really wanting to help us, so I’m glad this one went well. Our first train ride was fine – only 2 hours to Bologna, but the second one was…less than ideal… First of all, it was late, so we were sitting at the train station in Bologna for like 2 hours in the middle of the night and second, it was jam packed. We had seat reservations so we ended up having to kick people out of our cabin thing (all but two) but they had already put their baggage in the luggage holders…annoying. So basically we were on an 8 hour train ride throughout the night with a bunch of random people who didn’t have seat reservations and were just hanging out in the little hallway. But whatever, we made it…dreary eyed and ready to get off. Unfortunately we couldn’t go straight to a hostel and take a nap…we still had a little adventure to go…
We arrived in Salerno at 9am and got on a bus to Amalfi – which, for reasons we understood about 10 minutes in, would take over an hour (Google maps said it would be half an hour by car). What Google doesn’t take into account are the TINY roads, HUGE cliffs and ridiculously meandering roads one must navigate to get from Salerno to Amalfi. I know I wrote about the roads in NZ on that blog, and for the first 20 minutes that what the trip reminded me of…but then I decided this was a little bit more intense - if not only for the shear distance that these roads encompass but for the cliff drop-off on the side of the road. The roads really are only big enough for two regular cars to travel somewhat safely past each other and there not be a shoulder. Now imagine a coach bus traveling these roads, with the curves and the cliffs, trying to get by said normal sided vehicles. Let’s not even get into when two coach sized buses have to pass each other…talk about a close call, you don’t get any closer than that. Moral of the story: bus drivers here get major props from the Americans.
TINY little roads
Something else to add about all bus rides here (not just to Amalfi but all around the Amalfian Coast), there’s a whole lot of honking involved. Not an I’m-angry-because-your-driving-sucks honking but an oh-hey-huge-barreling-vehical-coming-around-the-0 visibility-corner honking. Literally, every corner the bus drivers honk a couple times – thank goodness it’s not an annoying honk because 100 honks in you’d be dying to get off the darn thing with the whole trip minus 10 minutes ahead of you. However, speaking of dying to get off, we had a couple minor motion-sickness casualties on the ride from Salerno. Nothing full-fledged, but Kayla and Holly were not feeling so hot after the initial ride there. No fun – first time for everything. I on the other hand was having a grand ‘ol time…weeeee.
Once we got to Amalfi, we chilled for a bit to let people recover while we waited for the next bus to Agerola/Campora…apparently where our hostel was. The bus driver we had was really awesome and let us know where the exact stop was when we got there, good thing because their stops are not marked AT ALL. After wandering a bit the wrong way down a road (which by the way there were only 3 roads marked on the map I had to get us to the place) we finally found our way. Trucking up the steps to the place we passed the neighbors, who didn’t know much English but helped us actually identify that this was where we needed to be. The gate we came to was locked and no one appeared to be there. The neighbors told us that we had to call them, which wouldn’t have been an issue if we had had a phone – I had the number, no phone. The neighbors pulled through for us and the little boy had a cell phone and called them for us – yay for awesome neighbors! Right when we got into the room we all collapsed and basically passed out for a 3-4 hour nap.
View from the bus to Agerola
Truckin along
View from our hostel...what?!
The next day we got up early (since it was Sunday there weren’t many buses running) and got to the beach at – get this – 8am. WOO. I can’t say that’s the earliest I’ve gotten to a beach, but it’s the earliest that I’ve gotten to one and stayed a significant amount of time (6-7 hours). Clearly just about no one was there so we weren’t entirely sure how it worked (if we had to pay or something). We ended up just plopping and seeing if anyone came over to tell us otherwise – no one did, win. Within a couple hours the beach was swarming with people – most of whom rented these nifty lounge chairs that had a moveable shade roof thing. Holly and I took the plunge into the water when we started feeling toasty- it was like heaven. A little chilly to begin with but literally the perfect temperature and since the Mediterranean is so salty, you literally just float without moving. The water is also very blue. PERFECTION.
View of Amalfi while swimming!
Cute little town
Once we were feeling pretty crispy (figuratively not literally (except Kelly…) - we reapplied sunscreen several times parents!) we got up and walked around the shops for a bit. We ended up taking an earlier bus back to eat our food at the hostel (which by the way is a basically a B&B minus the second B) and chill there for the rest of the day. Probably a good choice since we were going to be outside all day the next day too – adventure to Positano! Positano is another little town about 40 minutes from Amalfi and it is somehow even more beautiful. We went swimming almost immediately after getting there then sat on the beach until we felt like our skin was melting off (I don’t think we made it much more than 45 minutes), it was quite warm. Poor Kelly was wrapped up with no skin showing…she’s allergic to sunscreen – problemssss. After we left the waterfront, we went to find somewhere to eat and ended up picking a place right on the beach. It was SO GOOD (thanks to Kayla’s mommm!), YUM. Kayla and I split pesto pasta and a margarita pizza, Kelly got rigatoni and Holly got gnocchi. We demolished it all – I thought I was going to explode…so what do we do? Go get gelato, logical enough. After that we just walked around the town and went into shops and such.
Positano!!
FOOOOOOOOD :)
YAY! :)
We’ve been amazingly lucky with the weather everywhere. I mean it rained in Ireland but not all that much at all and it hasn’t rained at all in Italy. The only day it was a little overcast was the day we just hung out at the hostel in Venice all day before our train and even then it was still nice. I hope this good luck continues!
We are now in Rome for the night, flying out to Scotland tomorrow! SO EXCITED! I’m really glad we had 2 weeks in Italy – it really was the right amount of time for this trip. We’ve seen so much and it has been incredible but I think we are all ready for Scotland. These past two weeks have been jam packed and slightly hectic to figure out and I think we are also ready for a little less language barrier problem. Yes, the American’s are ready for some English. I know, typical, BUT we have tried our best these past two weeks, at least we gave it a good shot and semi-succeeded!
Ciao Italia – It’s been real. Bring on Scotland!
Fun Fact: Apparently the Amalfi Coast is known for lemons…? There is lemon paraphernalia EVERYWHERE, including the biggest lemons you have ever seen in your life…
HUGE lemons...those are relatively large nectarines beside them
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