Get up, shower and go back for a last pizza at L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele. The time of day doesn’t affect the lines (about an hour wait) or the speed of service (2 minutes). Like last night, we were done in under 1.5 hours.
Grabbing a cab to the Airport seemed like the best way for us. The expected price for a ride to the airport was around 15€. The rental car location is just off the terminal (there’s a shuttle). Our driver was kind enough to bring us directly to the rental lot for an extra 10€. At no point was our ride metered. Emptor Caveat.
Getting our car was efficient, and we received an upgrade. My big fear with the upgrade would be ending up a size bigger. My experience with car upgrades has always been from a small or regular car to a full-size SUV or minivan. Neither would work for the narrow Amalfi Coast roads or the tiny parking spaces. Our upgrade turned out to be a Renault Clio hybrid.
Car sorted out, we hit the road. Driving out of Naples was eventless. Getting on the Amalfi coast state "highway” (SS145) is even larger than expected. All the way to Sorrento, our first stop, the road was large enough for two cars most of the time. It was twisty but nothing scary. We barely even saw traffic. Our most significant delay: less than 5 minutes for about 500m of alternating traffic on a single lane.
Sorrento is a beautiful coastal town. We found parking just at the town entrance and walked to the Villa Comunale for views of the port, about 70 meters below. We took a couple of pictures and, not feeling like coffee on the terrace, we decided to keep walking and make our way to Porta Marina Seafood for what’s been described as a world-class octopus salad. We arrived at 16:00, just in time for the kitchen to be on break and prep before the dinner shift. We would have to wait a good hour or more before we could eat. We swallowed our disappointment and had to admit to ourselves that we were still full from our morning pizza. We elected to get back on the road.
We kept to the coastal road toward Positano. We grabbed a couple of videos of what we thought were winding roads, even managed to stop for a few coastal pictures, and stopped at a fruit stand for a light snack. You’ll find a couple of stands on the road, all perched on the side of a cliff. I’m not sure how local the produce is, but it's still ripe, ready to eat. They’ll also offer granita (lemon flavour) or lemonade (lemon juice with some water added most of the time)
Arriving in Positano, we found the sky getting darker and then drove into a hailstorm. Literal chunks of ice falling from the sky when, an hour ago, it was 29°C and sunny. That freak occurrence of nature lasted a good 10 minutes, turning into heavy rain for another 10 minutes or so. All the while, we’re trying to drive through winding roads along a cliff with barely enough space on the road for two cars to pass side by side and no visibility. While nerve-racking, we came out of it without a scratch on the vehicle and no cardiac event for either of us. I’ll call that a win.
You can imagine we skipped Positano and kept driving to Pianillo, a mountain village 28km from Positano. The 28km drive takes a little more than an hour. A small distance and a long time give you a sense of how challenging the road can be. It’s switchbacks for kilometres. Forget divider lines, the road is walled on one side and a cliff on the other. Every couple of minutes you have to maneuver around a car that just appeared in front of you and his barrelling down the hill at inhuman speed. People driving motorcycles on these roads are either very skilled or have a death wish.
We made it to our apartment with daylight to spare. It was a self-check-in, but not what we expected. The advertised AC turned out to be windows you can open, the wifi speed was a little slower than a 28,800 baud modem (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never used dial-up internet and should feel lucky). The bed had a frame larger than the mattress by a good couple of inches, and while the mattress wasn’t a total loss, it made more noise than a marching band when you did anything other than lie perfectly still. When life gives you lemons, you go to Amalfi, and that’s precisely what we did. We booked a hotel near Amalfi for the next night.
We drove to Ristorante Da Giannino in the next village over. They emphasize locally sourced cheese, vegetables and meats. Their English is about as good as my Italian (we both know about five words of the other’s language), but Karine managed to get us a good meal. A fair bit of warning, however, we arrived at 20:00 for dinner, a little early for Italy, very early for Da Giannino. It seemed like a family-run restaurant, and we walked in to find the entire staff and a couple of other family members having dinner. They were pretty chill about the whole thing, and we still got excellent service. The chef and owner also insisted on serving us limoncello before we left.
Tomorrow we’re doing the Sentiero degli Dei and the weather promises to be great.