Arriving by ferry to Amalfi, which is a small town among smaller towns on the Amalfi Coast, we already had a taxi ready to take us to our nearby rental. When we passed a pedestrian in a tunnel that barely had enough room for two cars, I got a sense that getting out and about was going to take some thinking. This was confirmed when, with no place to pull over, our driver just stopped driving and threw us out. Luckily, it was close to the rental.
I have to give credit to our rental– we walked into this on the kitchen counter with no need to figure out grocery shopping or finding a restaurant right away. The owner even arranged pizza delivery the second night for us, giving us another respite of getting the five of us out and back for an evening.
But still, there was laundry to do, gelato shops to visit, and semi-sandy beaches to walk barefoot upon. Dwayne and I grabbed the laundry bag and shopping bags and walked toward Minori for chores and exploration.
Here’s the thing about the road* on Amalfi Coast. In most places, it has two lanes, each about three-fourths the width of a car. For extra excitement, blind corners and parked cars liberally sprinkle the motorway. Motorcycles take the middle as they weave in and out.** Pedestrians get whatever of the road is leftover. Oddly, other than a clipped side mirror, we saw no accidents. I think the entire system is so precarious that everyone is hyperaware. I bet that if you did brain scans of drivers accustomed to different parts of the world, drivers around here would light up far more than, say, ones stuck in Seattle traffic jams.
With all this in mind, Dwayne and I walked to the nearest town, and I became someone else entirely. Usually, I walk quickly to get a jump on the next adventure or to maximize efficiency, but here, I sprinted to minimize the number of minutes in danger. Dwayne sauntered, taking pictures and pointing out all the beautiful spots, while I constantly calculated the future intersection of every vehicle with each other and myself. Perhaps I worried enough for both of us, because Dwayne was chill on all our forays into towns, where I needed hours of recovery to bring down the nervous twitching.
It wasn’t quite so bad when I did the same route with the kids the next day, but we only took them out the once and had a marvelous beach and scavenger hunt. It was much worse when the two of us went the other direction to the town of Amalfi. I really couldn’t understand why Dwayne would try to have a conversation with me when my every brain cell just screamed “get through this hell!” Again, I had to be anxious enough for the both of us.
But the world tends to balance itself, because we found ourselves up in the small town of Revello, a town so old that cars cannot fit on its streets, and many of the streets are staircases anyway. Dwayne found two villa-estates for us to explore, and I found a bikini in a window, so we all won.
And, since Revello wasn’t along the Amalfi Coast road, we could walk back down close to our rental. You know how long it takes to walk down steps that took a 20-minute taxi ride to reach the top? Actually, it doesn’t matter; it was way less time and effort than it took travelers to walk UP those stairs.
The Amalfi Coast is a beautiful spot with cute towns that I probably will never need to visit again, especially with Cinque Terre on the itinerary in a week!***
| Flashback: When we went to the Castera Palace, we rented a car for the afternoon from Sorrento, which straddles the greater Naples area and Amalfi Coast. We added extra difficulty points by getting a manual transmission and choosing a national holiday to make the trip. I tell you, there are few things sexier than a man who can drive the end-of-the-coast road out of Sorrento without injuring my children–or anyone else. I did the navigating and encouraging, and man, that man’s synapses were firing! I was so impressed. |
*Not a misprint. There’s truly just one road down the coast, with maybe a few offshoots into towns.
**Motorcycles illustrate the classic rat race. Traffic is terrible, but a motorcycle can avoid most of it by just riding down the center, and going around cars to be the first to punch it out of a stoplight or construction stop. This makes traffic worse, encouraging more people to be on motorcycles. And we quickly learned that any ambulance would have several motorcycles trailing behind it, making the most of the wake behind it.
***Revello I could make an exception for.
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