We travelled from Perugia to our apartment on the Amalfi Coast on Saturday and we stopped at Pompeii for a few hours on the way. After eating lunch by the car and having our espresso's at the cafe, we went up to the Marina gate, bought our tickets, and decided to hire a private guide for two hours which was a very good decision and you should do it if you can. Even though I spent 10 weeks studying the city I still learned a lot and was happy. If you do hire a guide though go to the desk as individual guides are not supposed to approach you directly.
We explored the area around the Forum and a few of the houses, (my particular favorite was the House of the Faun, named after the statue below, because I used it in my thesis paper for that class. It has every class of mosaic floor that you can think of and is very feng shui (as in the wall colors match the colors in the random stones in the mosaic floors for that room)
We noticed a lot of dogs on the premises, and since it was lunch time they were all lying down sleeping somewhere. They have a program on the site that allows for strays and abandoned dogs to have a safe haven on the site and they are cared for and given a vet if they need it until they can be adopted. It's like an open pound I guess. I'll tell you how to donate money and link the site as soon as I know it)
After Pompeii we drove through Naples, with the car doors locked and windows rolled up, and up to Positano on a winding, cliff side, narrow but well paved road. We were staying at a little town between Positano and Amalfi where we had to walk 64 steps down to our place (meaning 64 steps up to our car when we wanted to leave) which was worth it because of the view. That night we ate at a restaurant on the other side of the cliff that our hosts have frequented a lot so the staff recognized us which was nice. We ate outside in between two obnoxious looking men who insisted on keeping their cigar lit throughout dinner until gramma finally leaned over and suggested we should shove it up his you know what. we laughed and discussed the well tried gossip about the general rudeness of some people when all of the sudden gramma leaps up and yells "well for God's sake!" and the table thought she had finally cracked and was about to attack the man for real. Luckily for us, she had recognized people from her home town and was running to greet them instead. Given the extreme remoteness of this location, basically it was a tiny nook in the coast, this meeting was weirdly random.
Sunday, we slept in and got ready for a concert we were going to that night in Ravello (which is located above Amalfi) we arrived a few hours early so we could sit at a cafe and eat gelato while watching a wedding party in the nearby church. Afterwards we visited the Villa Cimbrone which I'm sure you'll all recognize this view from, even if you don't quite know where you've seen it before.
We then attended a concert in Villa Rufolo put on by tenor Marcello Nardis and pianist Norman Shetler performing songs from Shubert, Shumann, and Wolf and lasted about 2 hours. The concert was supposed to be performed outside with the sea behind the performers but since it would ruin the dynamics of the music they switched it to a small intimate room inside which was nice. The music was themed around madness so it was very passionate and well played.
The next day, Monday, we went to explore Naples after taking off all of our jewelry, ditching the purses, and bringing the bare minimum of stuff. We took a ferry their but since it was a commuter ferry we were ushered inside and couldn't enjoy the view but once we got there we went to visit the church, a couple of museums, one of which was only a church with some beautiful statuary by Sanmartino. The church was called Cappella Sansevero if you ever have a chance to go. We then took a trolly that from the bottom of the hill to the top to visit another museum which also housed a complete church noted for its artwork and had a display of the various nativity scenes that are a symbol of Naples. The scenes are very intricate and focus more on the town life with a small place reserved for the actual nativity scene.
this Museum overlooked part Naples which is a very large and sprawling city, despite the massive still active Volcano next to it.
Tuesday we went to Amalfi to do some last minute shopping and eat and travelled to Positano by ferry to get a good view of the coast. (that's how I got the picture of the restaurant we ate at on Sunday). And ate at home and packed for the long plane ride back on Wednesday.the plane ride was as miserable for me as the trip over here was but I got to see a stupid romantic comedy, Letters to Juliet, a better than expected period piece, the Young Victoria, and remade The Karate Kid which was adorable. I also introduced Gramma to Modern Family and she almost stopped watching before the best scene in the pilot. She said it was worth it for that scene but I don't think she was sold on it yet. I'll just have to make her watch the rest of the season ;).
Once we got home we had a little adventure in San Francisco before finally getting home to sleep.
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