Amalfi Coast

Here we are on The Amalfi Coast, the lemon centre of the world. You can buy anything to do with lemons here, edible and otherwise. The views are spectacular. We have a lovely little room with a balcony overlooking the sea. It reminds me a little of Oban in Scotland. 

This is me writing yesterday's blog.

We have managed to be here on a long weekend so it is extra busy. It is impossible not to keep taking photos of all of the buildings stacked on top of each other. You wouldn't want to be the bottom floor when they add on one too many.

Some of the buildings appear to rise out of the natural stone cliff faces:

The Italians like to use every piece of land. On this coastline there are many terraced gardens of olives, grapes and lemons.

We have explored Amalfi by foot today, up and down steps all afternoon. My hip joints are squealing. 

Whilst the ocean looks really good, there is hardly any beach and most are private. They are more than a little stony. Have a look at the photo below and spot the two beach fronts. As you can see they are more about sunbathing and not so much about swimming. Both of these beaches are private but you can pay to lie on their sun beds. 

We managed to have the closest thing to an Australian cappuccino this morning. One has to be grateful for it being close enough to the real thing, even though it wasn't quite hot enough, the tide was a long way out, there was too much froth and it cost a fortune. Nonetheless it was the best since leaving Scotland. It was probably a 5/10, ouch!

After our big food tour we kept dinner very simple last night, dining on rustic pizza and delicious gelato. The hotel has a lovely garden balcony for breakfast. Not sure this photo does it justice.

Part of our plan here was to take a boat trip to The Isle of Capri but the sea is quite choppy and it is a long distance by boat so given my constitution we will have to stick to land activities. Positano and Sorrento can be visited by bus so this might be more my style. It will still be a challenge travelling these roads by coach, round and round and round. 

Did I mention our journey from Naples? At first I thought we had a terrible driver as he barged his way through traffic in the city centre but on reflection If you are not assertive you'd never get here. There were times I thought about shutting my eyes but being so prone to travel sickness I had to look. Once we got going on the motorways we really got going, reaching some amazing speeds. The Austalian police would have a field day over here. Then we had to go up and over a mountain so I was very glad to get here.

I would hate to be driving around here and parking is a nightmare. Cars are parallel parked millimetres from each other. So many cars have bumps and scrapes. The best way to get around is on scooter or motorbike. 

Can you see all the motorbikes lining the street in the above photo?

Tony is having another afternoon siesta as I write this. Too many steps for him as well. We need to work off a fair bit of prosciutto before the next food tour.

Signing off from beautiful Amalfi x