Positano

Positano is a former fishing town built on the side of a steep cliff on the Amalfi Coast near Naples. It has one, one-way road that snakes its way 4.5km down from the main highway and back up again, with drivers (mainly on scooters and tiny three wheeled trucks) racing round the hairpin bends like slot cars. No matter where you're stayin in Positano, you'll take this road to get there. At some point, you'll leave the road and continue on foot through the labyrinthine pathways and tracks that make this area so quirky (and getting lost so easy!).

We like the place we're staying in. I was determined not to book just-another-hostel, and tried to google for a nice Pensione instead. I was switched onto the idea from a book I'd read set in Italy in Summer. So, home is now the Pensione Maria Luisa, run by a smiley old guy named Carlo who says good morning no matter what time it is.

The Pensione Maria Luisa as seen from the one road.

Everything in town is expensive, so we've been skipping meals to keep costs down. But it's been worth it. We also got a €39 parking ticket for paying the wrong rate. Apparently only residents are allowed to pay the €8 per day rate on the signs. We're meant to pay €3 per hour. After getting the ticket, once we realised we couldn't afford the real rate, we decided parked the car way up along the main road and walk the very, very, very, very long way back into town. We're still not sure how to actually pay the ticket... the whole thing's in Italian and there's no web addres... hmmm.

I splashed out on a room with a view for our last night. Check out how much you can get for €15 extra!

(Side note: the room with a view had a broken shower, so it wasn't all flash. Sponge baths are so in right now.)

Life Lesson #31 - Tolls Aren't So Bad

When we first got stuck in Naples I could feel today would teach me a Life Lesson.

Though I'd already been driving for five hours since leaving Rome, there was a grit to Naples that I appreciated having the chance to see. I planned to call the Life Lesson "Always Set Your GPS to Avoid Tolls".

How wrong I was! Avoiding tolls meant we had to drive from one end of Naples to the other (and it's huge!) in standstill traffic. On the motorway we would have paid maybe €3 in tolls and it would have taken half an hour. Instead, it took two and a half hours, and cost untold in petrol!

Though it was nice to see Mt Vesuvius up close, this is the main thing I will remember about Naples:

So many photos like this to choose from...

As some redemption, the last half hour of our drive to Positano took us further around the coast to Sorrento right on sunset:

Then, after winding our way around hairpin bends on impossibly thin roads next to sheer cliffs dropping straight down to the rocks, we were greeted with this view as the last of the sunset streaked across the horizon:

Yes, that is the road.

A great end to a hopelessly over-complicated drive!