Friday 1 June 2018

The Long Drive To Amalfi

Tuesday 22 May 2018. We arrive into the Port of Naples at 7:00am. We have an excursion so the alarm was set for silly o'clock.

We were booked to take a boat ride to Amalfi, but apparently there was only one other couple wanting that particular tour. I did suggest they either got a smaller boat or we would just spread out, but to no avail. Instead we transfer our booking to one doing both Sorrento and Amalfi by coach. It will be a long day and most of it will be spent on the coach...

Norwegian Eric is dogging our footsteps... Right on top at the back is a climbing wall. You'd have to be seriously deranged wouldn't you? We board a coach and settle down for the ride to Sorrento. We spent a week there once and have plans to invest in a bottle of Limoncello, that wonderful lemon-based liqueur so beloved of.. er... me... But what's this? We have made a stop at a Limoncello factory! I want to drink it not watch it being made! But that's not a problem as it's still so early in the morning the factory isn't actually working yet. However we still get the talk and tour. When we reach the shop we gasp at the prices... Our plan to buy in Sorrento does not change... Having wasted half an hour out of our day we get on the coach and waste another 20 minutes as the guide tries to find another bored couple who have left the factory to sit on a hidden bench in the factory garden...

A photo stop above Sorrento. This is "above" in the same sense that Blackpool Tower is "above" Douglas on the Isle of Man. Sorrento's harbour is the one against the cliff dead centre of the photo, not the one in the foreground.

Being familiar with Sorrento we decide we will duck out of the guided walking tour. Especially when we find that we have just one hour ten minutes and the coach has to stop well outside the town so there will be a 10 minute walk both in and out. I'm not sure what the guide showed them, but none of them seem particularly thrilled when we catch up with them later.

I suspect they may have had time to buy a drink but not to sit and take their time over it. Which is pretty much what we did and then went in search of our bottle of yellow nectar.

The little market streets of Sorrento are interesting and fun places. At night the locals promenade here, all dressed to impress and to meet friends and socialise. We find lots of places with Limoncello at much less than factory prices. Strange that...

Then there's literally 5 minutes to do whatever we want before we see the guide and coach driver legging it back towards the coach park and we head back too. One of the passengers is limping and supported by his family, obviously in pain. We were quite worried, but he seems to be alright after a bit so perhaps it was a turned ankle or something.

It takes ages to reach Amalfi. The roads are so narrow that in many places they are governed by men with stop/go signs. They don't seem to have any way to talk to each other. I think that they just turned the sign to "go" when there was a break in the traffic. So it leads to scenes like this halfway between the two signs where we meet other traffic and one vehicle has to reverse to a slightly wider bit of road. Miss Franny watches a wing mirror pass by literally one inch from her window. It doesn't look quite so dramatic on the photo but believe me... one inch...

Our total time in Amalfi was two hours. Again because we had been here before and knew the town, we ducked out of the guided walking tour (we are real rebels, aren't we?) and surprised a restaurant barker by accepting his entreaties and taking a seat to order a pizza. Pizza margherita in this part of the world is as good as you will taste it anywhere in the world.

We didn't have a great deal of time for a detailed sketch so I kept it to half a page (so roughly A5 size) and when a few drops of rain started to fall we headed over the road to buy an ice cream. Again, ice cream - gelato - in Italy is something to die for. We got into the shop just as the young serving girl dropped a large metal tub of ice cream sideways into the space it had come out of and then struggled to get it out again. As the owner looked at me and raised his eyebrows, she got the giggles and there was a moment that severely tested my rudimentary Italian but was very funny! We left with our ice creams and a pat on the shoulder from the owner. I glanced back and the girl was grinning at me with mischievous eyes through her fringe. Dammit, when did I get so old...? Miss Franny grasped my ear to help me safely across the road.

It was a long drive back to the ship. Out of an eight hour day we have spent over 5 hours either on the coach or at the Limoncello factory that we didn't want to visit. Ah well... We repaired to the Squid and Anchor pub on Deck 7 and a pint of Guinness disappeared quite quickly!

It was quite overcast but very warm and we sat on our balcony until it was time to sail away. A fine figure of a man...

I read until the harbour wall started to slide past as we got under way which was our signal to get ready for our evening meal.

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