Day Three:
By the way, Women hear this, in Italy the new ‘in’ color or is it the old ‘in’ color is now ‘in’ again- Royal Purple is it! Other purples and plums will work as well.
Donna had left her sun glasses in Rome when we left. This turned out to be somewhat of an emergency and she was determined to buy a new pair. Problem was, in Positano, you cannot get a pair of sun glasses for less than $150. We even went into a very small pharmacist that also had a rack of sun glasses in the window; I guess that the average Italian tourist wouldn’t be seen dead in a cheap pair of sunglasses. We departed after our continental breakfast, picked up the car and drove down into the village. At the bottom the road we met another two roads. We took the one heading south since that is the way we were heading. The other is the main road into and out of town. They widened is so that it is actually a two way road. However, I noticed that in order to widen the road, one lane was hanging out (cantilevering) in the air completely.
What can I say? The drive down the Amalfi coast was breathtaking. I became even more adept at pulling over to let faster traffic go by. This included buses and trucks. Everyone was in a hurry. I did however draw the line on the way home when these two guys on bicycles tried to pass me on a downhill grade. One can only take so much humiliation so I speeded up and lost them on an uphill grade. The drive was full of wonders. One incredible vista after the next. We wanted to stop in Amalfi but it was a zoo with buses everywhere and no place to park. We just pushed on and stopped in some other small town further down the coast. We walked on the beach, I got a Gelato, and we wandered into the town (uphill of course). I eventually found another Farmacia and went in to look for sun glasses. They had a rack with four sets of very dusty sunglasses on it. Donna liked one of the pairs and we went to buy them. How much we asked, the pharmacist said “yes” and called the lady from the back room who went over to the rack, ignored it and proceeded to rifle through a bunch of drawers full of sun glasses in packaging. She pulled out one pair after the next, how much we asked, “30€, no 20€ for you” she answered. Good price, but Donna wanted that particular pair that she had first selected and this lady would not sell the display model for anything. The lady pulled out one pair after another and Donna kept saying no, she wanted the pair she had originally selected. This was quite baffling to us. Why couldn’t we buy that pair? We weren’t getting anywhere fast so, pretty soon Donna and I are back there with this lady pulling out drawer after drawer of sun glasses in packages, opening them to check them out and putting them back. Again, Donna tried to get the lady to sell the dusty pair that had been in the rack and again the lady refused. This lady had rules and she was basically, inflexible. We did eventually get lucky and actually found a new, packaged pair of glasses identical to the pair that Donna had originally selected. Good thing too or we might still be there sorting out the contents of those drawers, there must have been over a hundred pairs stuffed into the drawers behind that counter. Up the street and around the corner we wandered into a tourist shop. Finally I had found what I was looking for. A tourist shop located in a small town with almost no tourists on a street unlikely to see many tourists because it was pretty much, way off the beaten path. The prices were much more reasonable than in Amalfi and that place that we had stopped along the ‘highway’ where all of those tourist buses had stopped as well. Donna selected the parts to make a tray with four (or was it six) espresso cups sitting around a small sugar bowl. All hand painted ceramic with some cobalt so it goes with all of the other cobalt stuff that we have in the Vista Casa. We also got a very nice signed reproduction of a typical hillside on the Amalfi coast with houses tumbling down toward the sea. I had a nice chat with the owner who seemed to think that I spoke Italian remarkably well for someone from San Diego, California.
One of the things that really amazed me was how these people had carved out this cliff for agriculture. In some places there were 20’ high retaining walls to create 8’ wide planted areas and this type of thing was all over the side of the cliffs. We decided we didn’t want to continue any further down the coast but that we had to visit Ravello which is a mountain town located essentially straight up in the air above the town of Amalfi. Well, what can you say about Ravello? Words just can’t even begin to do this mountain town justice. If you want to know what we experienced, you are just going to have to go there. You very definitely won’t be disappointed. We traipsed around the town for a number of hours, visited a castle type thing with a show on shoes and had lunch in a tratoria. I took hundreds of photos of architectural details. I think I want to start a business building new five hundred year old (mixed with two thousand year old buildings). The roads in and out of Ravello leading up that mountain may have been the narrowest that I have ever seen. On the way out we had to inch our way past a giant tourist bus with only inches to spare on either side of the car. A few minutes later as we slowly maneuvered past an Alfa Romeo in another tight spot, our mirrors kissed as we passed.
Thankfully, we made it safely back to Positano and that evening we chose to have dinner at a restaurant only somewhat down the street from the hotel instead of down by the beach so that the return uphill trip wouldn’t be so challenging. The collateral benefit of that is we sat next to a railing with the most incredible view of the town spread out before us. Donna thought the whole thing was very romantic. We ordered Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Donna Approved, it was very good.
For a lot more photos of this trip and especially Ravello, please visit my construction web site page on
Antiquity Replication
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