Wednesday 24 August 2005. We take coach tour to Amalfi. The driver takes his time round the hairpins - far more comfortable than the frantic tear-arsing of the local bus that took us to Positano! There must be two distinct training regimes for public transport drivers in Italy.
On the coach driving training course they play Chopin and those soothing cheap CDs with the sound of waterfalls behind little tinkling piano riffs that go nowhere. They say things like, "Ok, here's a slight bend... Pip your horn to warn other drivers and slow right down before you turn or people may be forced to lean." On the bus driving course they play Deep Purple's Rock Hits and say things like, "Ok, hairpin ahead - you need a good run up to this, get your foot down and wrench the wheel....NOW!!!"
Along the way we pass a few of these tiny model villages at the side of the road, built into the cliff. They were built by the locals as fairy villages. Utterly charming. One even had flying fairies in a cave. Either they were dangling on string or they were real fairies, astonished at the sound of a warning horn coming round the corner so that they had to come out to see what it was...
It's a longer trip today and we actually stop for a while above Positano for people to take photos. Then it's back onto the coach and on towards Amalfi, stopping for a mid-morning coffee on the way at a roadside ceramics shop. As you do...
The coach went over a bridge at one point where the sea actually flowed underneath us onto a tiny triangular beach between a cleft in the cliffs.
Mid morning we arrive at Amalfi. The beaches along the Amalfi Coast were the location for the landing of the Allied armies during World War II. It is almost impossible today to imagine soldiers having to fight their way up through the towns. What's the first thing we see when we get into Amalfi? Correct, a Sita bus! I beckoned the driver to lean out of his window. "Talk to him, pal," I said, pointing to our relaxed and chilled coach driver, "he could teach you a thing or two!" "Piss-a off!" The Sita bus closed its doors on the ample rear of an Italian mamma who hadn't quite got on, due to the mass of humanity packed inside and screeched away from the bus stop. Wait - no, it was the woman caught in the door who was screeching...
The huge tiled map of the Mediterranean region on the sea front. The magnetic compass was invented at Amalfi and sailors traded it all over the Mediterranean in the 1200s.
We walked into the town and found ourselves looking at everything on two levels. Looking horizontally we could see the ground and the bottom half of buildings.
But it was only by looking up that we saw the true spectacle and majesty of the setting for these wonderful buildings. The front of the basilica is richly decorated, but the real beauty is high up over the entrance and in the columnar top storey of the bell tower.
The streets and alleys of the town are the same. The main street is so narrow that it is almost traffic free. The little three-wheeled cars and vans (as seen in the Pompeii entry) come into their own here, although we saw more produce arriving at shops on sack trucks than on vehicles. The buildings are several storeys tall and you even find that they are connected across the street by the upper storeys. Actually the valley that the main street occupies is so steep and narrow that the third floor as seen from the street might be at ground level to the rear!
The view above is often more rewarding as you find tiny pathways and alleys climbing up stepped streets and turning tight corners, buildings appearing to stack above each other, so close is the town to the rising cliff faces.
Despite the tendency for the narrow streets to get choked with people and the occasional entire family tree on a Lambretta nipping in and out with wild abandon, the shops and atmosphere are a delight.
Full of colour, noise, scooter horns pipping and two-stroke engines growling, fruit and veg and every sort of other goods are displayed in shop windows and on walls and on trestles set up in front of shops.
There are restaurants and café bars galore and if you just was a snack there are some scrummy pastries and breads and cakes to tempt you.
As I mentioned, it was here in Amalfi that the magnetic compass was invented and with such a nautical tradition here we are, of course, going to take a trip up and down the coast on a boat. First I'm taking a wander up the side alleys for a bit whilst Fran and Mum hit the souvenir shops!
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