Our Amalfi Coast

Monday 12th October

Our Amalfi Coast

Today started out with a lovely big breakfast whilst watching the soccer show = the footy show – all of their counterparts were there: Lou Richards, Jack Dyer, Brian Taylor, etc – except the show seems to go 24 hours. Then we headed out to try our luck with the public transport system. Just a couple of observations: the conversion rate for Italian minutes = somewhere between 10 – 15 Aussie minutes, yep, Italian minutes are big, fat, lazy minutes – ya gotta love ‘em and do not depend on the signage – just ask and keep asking people “dove?” and “quando?” and eventually you get there.

We were in luck, our first and second connections timed perfectly – along the way we bought two x 6Euro bus & train 24hour coast passes which we used as follows: 22kilometre trip to Amalfi where 3rd connection(for the day) was waiting to take us 16kilometres to Positano and a further 17km to Sorrento (total time of trip from Salerno to Sorrento = 3hours) where we had a bite to eat before catching a ferry to Capri (the cost of the ferry to Capri was additional to our bus & rail pass) – then when we returned from Capri to Sorrento we caught a train to Pompeii, then connected with a minute to spare with a train back to Salerno and a final bus trip back to our hotel at about 9.45pm. A fantastic day – but the highlight for both of us was the incredible and spectacular 3hour bus ride which makes the Great Ocean Road look like an empty 6 lane highway.

Imagine a constantly twining road with endless blind turns - at which the bus driver hooted his approach on roads which were quite often too narrow for two vehicles to pass – so that either the bus or the other vehicle had to reverse until a wider or straighter patch of road could be found, with traffic controllers on walkie talkies to each other at about 20 spots along the way, taking it in turns to halt traffic from proceeding in one or the other direction, all happening high up steep vertical cliffs (sometimes 500ft up), sometimes on patches of roads which were wider than the natural footing allowed and Italian engineers had somehow built bridges and supports to allow the road to overlap into space a metre or so in some places, driven by obviously ex air-fighter pilots who had flown the absolute maximum number of bombing raids in one war or another and this was the closest they could get to the thrill of dodging enemy fire up in the air – the drivers were amazing, only ever slowing down to a crawl when they had less than a centimetre clearance on both sides (the rock face or cliff-drop and the other vehicle), they had absolutely no fear as they careered around corners sometimes in the rain (the bus nearly fish tailing around the bends) straight into the path of on-coming motorbikes/ vespers, cars, buses, bicyclists, pedestrians, whatever – the rule to stay on the right side of the road id disregarded (probably because there is not enough road for 2 vehicles in most places). However, after a while the beautiful amazing views of the Mediterranean and incredible buildings hanging onto the cliff faces were more enjoyable than leaning into every corner and banging on an imaginary horn in sync with the bus driver.

But the main lesson learnt today was that we have to take a chance and we took the chance that, in spite of some advice to the contrary, to go to Capri to see the Blue Grotto or Grotto Azzurro – however on arrival the ticket office was closed due to inclement weather and unfavourable conditions – no Blue Grotto today. So we took the Funicolare (3rd form of transportation for the day) up to the top of Capri and strolled the shops and lanes and visited the church. It was a bonus to spend time in the boutiques where the rich and famous shop. It appears that purple and hundreds of various shades of mauve/magenta/hot pink is the colour for men and women for the upcoming European winter.

And tomorrow we are off again – to Rome - out last big city location before Dubai and arriving home Wednesday night (9sleeps) but i am looking forward to seeing the Sistine chapel and especially the creation when God charged Adam with life through his finger.