ANOTHER GREAT DAY IN POSITANO

Hi everybody. I am typing this on Wednesday morning. I ran out of time yesterday. We had another great day although we did see a few showers. Fortunately they didn’t interfere with our plans. As I am typing, I am looking down at the beach watching the staff erect the beach umbrellas on the private part of the beach, locate the swimming pontoon in the correct position and generally preparing for the day’s activity.

We headed back to Amalfi by ferry yesterday where, after an entertaining exercise in not being able to get on buses, we successfully negotiated with two taxi drivers to transport our group seven kilometres up the mountain to Ravello, a very picturesque town set high in the mountains overlooking the coastline. As you can see, wine and drugs are keenly promoted in this town.

After wandering the town, visiting the excellent gardens of Villa Cambrio, and having a leisurely lunch, we again negotiated with a very entertaining and persistent older Italian taxi driver to return to Amalfi. He wanted to bring us all the way to Positano at an exorbitant price but, when it became evident that all his reasons why we should stay in his taxi (stated in Italian and translated by Gino) for the trip to Positano could not convince us, he treated us to some very loud Italian music of his liking.  He wanted 60 euro to bring four of us back to Positano. We caught a bus for 10.

The bus trip back was exciting. The road between Positano and Amalfi is obviously the road that gets described as the dangerous scary road along the Amalfi Coast. It has precipitous mountain on one side and a vertical drop to the ocean on the other with barely enough and sometimes no room to pass but nothing seems to phase the bus driver as he weaves his way around the blind bends with horn blaring to warn oncoming traffic that he is coming.  We made it safely home after getting into trouble from a ticket inspector for not validating the tickets in the machine at the entrance to the bus. The only word I understood in the comments he made was “penalty” but none was imposed.

After we got back, I went down to the beach for my daily swim. I was walking towards the water when I heard someone say “ Michael Kyle”. It was Graham Walsh and his son Tom, accountants and golfers from Southport, who were also heading down for their swim. Small world.

Last night, we had yet another party, again at the Moro’s, where we welcomed their son Christian and his fiancée Christie who arrived after having been to a wedding in Norway.

 While in Ravello, the girls met their friend Ceres.