Well, that was a bit of a crazy day!
Nine hours out and about… getting to Amalfi on the bus, ferry to Positano, Positano, ferry back to Amalfi, Amalfi and the bonkers bus back to the campsite.
It was a bit of an early start that we needed to get on the 8:50 bus from right outside the campsite down into Amalfi.
Neither of us had a good nights sleep. We have a road a few feet from the van and it was busy. I even took to putting my AirPods in, at about 5am, with noise cancellation on, to try and give me some rest.
We’d bought tickets (€2.40 each) from Antonio, the campsite owner, last night. And he’d told us the bus would be direct into Amalfi. It wasn’t. We had to switch buses in Maiori where the bus hit the coast. Then there was a bus along the coast road from Maiori to Amalfi.
Fortunately we’d started talking to a French couple from Chamonix who also spoke Italian and seemed to know how the buses worked. And we just followed their lead on what to do. At least we chatted to the guy as his wife didn’t speak any English.
The bus finally dropped us at the port in Amalfi and we decided to head straight to Positano on the ferry.
Here’s some photos from the journey…
I’m afraid I had two reactions to the “beautiful” amalfi coast. The first is that while it looks dramatic, we’ve seen better. That sounds a bit crass, but Berchtesgaden or Palaiokastritsa are much more gob-smacking. While Dubrovnik and Lecce are similarly much more our cup of tea. Secondly, the Amalfi coast view just fills me with an over-riding sense of infestation… we’ve infested the world with billions of people who’ve destroyed the natural beauty of the place… and especially with the most beautiful, filled it with economies that live only (or significantly) for the tourists. The irony of me saying that on a 3 month tour is not lost on me!
I think there’s probably a further disappointment with this area. Clearly the ports along this stretch of coast were hugely important trading posts, for the Greeks, Romans and through history. But I really don’t get a sense of this at all. The very limited Arsenale in Amalfi speaks to some of that, but it’s a disappointment to just see, Limoncello, Italian shoes and tea towels everywhere. Clearly market forces have dictated that it’s just tourist shops rather than museums that prevail, but you’d have thought the local authorities would have seen it as their duty to put a serious museum in somewhere 🤷♂️
Once we landed in Positano we headed upwards to see if we could get a coffee, some good photos and some stamps. Here’s some pictures.
It wasn’t two soups… but some will get the joke. It was two coffees!…
We then went in search of a tobacconist for some stamps… and posted some postcards.
At this point we weren’t really getting the Positano vibe. Everywhere was just rammed with people, shuffling from one tatt shop to another.
So we bailed on Positano and headed back to Amalfi on the ferry. Positano is supposed to be an up market Amalfi, but there wasn’t enough culture for us.
Our ferry back didn’t have any outside deck, so we watched the trip through a salt encrusted window. And of course there were dozens of cruise passengers from the Cruise Liner in the bay, doing their shore based tours. Mostly they seemed to be Americans on the cruise.
Once back in Amalfi, we headed for the Arsenale museum where we were greeted by THE most exuberant tourist officer you could imagine. If he were an actor he’d be thrown off the stage for over doing it. Anyway we walked around the museum (for €3 each) that was showing some old Roman pots, a model of old Amalfi, a rebuilt boat and a compass display – apparently Amalfi was the home of the compass (taken from the Chinese) in Europe.
After that museum (and Sue had asked the tourist officer for a good restaurant recommendation – and ensuing hilarious verbal and non-verbal directions… excuse shoulder!) we headed for the Cathedral (Duomo).
On the way we bumped into a wedding photo shoot (not another one) on the Cathedral steps…
The cathedral is only accessible as a package entrance including the cloisters, museum, crypt and cathedral… for €4 each.
From the Cathedral we took up our Tourist Officer’s restaurant suggestion, Marina Grande, (after bailing when we first saw it was a Michelin restaurant!) down on the sea front. The food was good, but expensive, and the views worth the extra cost of the food.
We then took a stroll around the Amalfi streets, which turned out to be one street really, running from the port back.
The main tourist shopping street seems to ostensibly be pedestrian only, except for a scooter every minute or so, hooting its horn and attempting to navigate the crowds at full speed. If I don’t know any better I’d think they were part of some Italian Squid Game and they were being filmed trying to kill as many tourists as possible.
Then just when you’ve got used to the scooters in the crowd, the SquidGame TV producers throw a Mercedes taxi down into the pedestrians to pick up extra points!
Bonkers!
Then we headed back to the port under the false assumption that getting a bus back to the campsite was within our combined intellect!
When we arrived at the port / central-bus-stop, we asked about the bus we needed to Maiori and were told 5 o’clock. Nothing more could be extracted from the bus operator staff.
So, we sat on the dock wall, roasting in the sun, then stood in the shade of one of the buses that didn’t seem to be going anywhere.
With about 15 minutes until our bus was supposed to leave, things started to get edgy. A couple of buses arrived and set their front digital destination displays to places that COULD be our route. So everyone tried to dive onto the bus, with full elbows out. Only for a shout from a guy who acted like the terminal controller, said “no Maiori”. Then proceeded to shout “ Maiori over there” without pointing or indicating in any way where “there” was. Eventually we realized he wanted us to stand across the road, where we’d need to sprint to a bus that deigned to be ours.
By this time we’d bumped into the French couple we’d met in the morning from the campsite. They seemed just as confused as us.
With a couple of minutes to go we saw a bus display “Maiori” and we all sprinted to the front door.
Full elbows out again and we got on the bus!
The trip along the coast to Maiori is the vehicular equivalent of “full elbows out”. The buses jostle with scooters (from both directions) as well as oncoming cars. The bus’s driver sounds his (independently sounding) two tone horns to let oncoming victims know that a f’off bus is careering around a blind single lane bend!
Then at a few points along the coast road, there are strategically placed human-traffic-lights. By which I mean a person stands with a Baton (red one side, green the other) and a walkie talkie. The person is in contact with a second person at the other end of the controlled section where they make sure that the “even more impassable road” is made one way while they twirl their batons .
Of course, it also seems that some scooter riders ignore the people traffic lights and you see them swerve around the bus as they clear the blind bends when they should actually be static behind a red baton.
I’m tempted to say it’s a miracle that nobody gets hurt, but I very much doubt that’s the case, people will undoubtedly be getting hurt on this stretch of road!
I hope I’ve managed to truly convey the chaos that is the Amalfi coast road. AVOID THIS ROAD in your own car at all costs!
And of course, all the sensible internet forums say you should absolutely avoid this road, with good reason, its carnage!
When we finally got to Maiori, we disembarked and then tried to guess where we got the next bus from. The timetables attached the bus stop didn’t relate to our route, so we hung around where we thought made sense.
Then when a bus did arrive everyone jumped on, (and therefore we had to too, else we wouldn’t have got a seat) in the hope we were going the right way.
The we headed up the hill at break neck speed with the two tone horns blaring on blind bends and miraculously nobody got hurt.
And because the info screens on the bus don’t actually announce the next stops, I got my phone out and laid in a route to the campsite… that way I’d know when we were close (‘cos all the hairpins bends start to look the same after a while) and I could press the request-stop button.
After the stress of getting the bus, we collapsed in the van and did nothing.
Except it’s worth mentioning that we went to pay for the two nights at the campsite. We were hoping to stay longer, but neither of us can stomach another night of cars and scooters hailing past on the road 10 feet’s away from our ears. There’s also the colonal angst that one toilet between 20 vans instills in you and the lack of washing facilities.
And as we paid, Antonio got his phone translation app out and basically tried to bully us into giving him a 5 star review before we leave in the morning. Telling us it needed to be 5 star and that he’d be checking to make sure we did it before the morning. We’ll not be leaving a 5 star review and may have to blag something about not being able to log into the Park4Night app.
Anyway, we’re going to head to the Pompei area tomorrow and probably spend a few nights there to do Sorrento, Naples, Pompei and Vesuvius. But if the site’s like this one then we may review our decisions again.
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