Who goes south in August?

Amazing Positano

That was the million dollar question as we planned a last minute trip to the furthest south point we had been in Italy, the Amalfi Coast, in the middle of August. After a hot, relatively dry European summer we knew it probably wasn't a smart decision but based on all the wonderful things we had heard of the region and our growing love for Italy we just couldn't pass up one last opportunity to get a taste of amazing food, great people, and stunning views.

Our trip looked like this... fly to Naples on Tuesday morning, hit up Pompeii upon our arrival, visit the island of Capri on Wednesday, and enjoy some of the small towns of the Amalfi Coast on Thursday and Friday before returning to Zurich on Saturday. While we wanted to stay in the highly rated town of Positano for our entire visit, considering our last minute booking during the peak of summer, prices were outrageous and availability was limited. So instead we opted to save some money and stay in Naples the first two nights seeing that it was about the same distance to get to Pompeii and Capri from either location. Now, I don't know how much you know about Naples reputation, but let's just say its not the most highly rated place in Italy. While it might be the gateway to a lot of fantastic places to visit, the city itself (at least for most people) could not be more disappointing. Dirty and sketchy might just be two of my words of choice, some might even say the entire city is still run by the mafia...





Keeping all that in mind we chose to spend as little time as possible in the city of Naples. Upon our arrival we took a cab to our hotel and while the hotel was (thankfully) quite nice (and air conditioned considering it was close to 100 degrees outside), the smell outside of the hotel was not. Our hotel was centrally located to both the train station and the harbor so it was easy once we dropped our stuff to hop on the 45 minute train ride south to Pompeii.



Pompeii ruins in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius

To put it simply the ruins of Pompeii were incredible. For being 2000 years old I think it is fair to say they are in "immaculate" condition. It was clear that the city was impressively constructed for its time and for it to have been preserved so well truly makes it a world treasure and opportunity for us to step back in time. While seeing the architecture was interesting, I found the petrified bodies exhibit to be haunting. Somehow they found a way to inject plaster between the layer of ash and the bodies that remained when the town was discovered, thus leaving an exact replica of the position people died in when Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered everyone and everything in ash.

Petrified bodies at Pompeii

The only shade to be found at Pompeii... my favorite Italian trees and my favorite little girl!

More views around Pompeii

With that memory forever in our mind we called it a night but made an obligatory stop for Italian pizza on our way back to the hotel. Unfortunately the Italian trains lived up to their reputation as not only was the first train that came by simply too packed to even get on, but it was sufficiently behind schedule. When the second train arrived (also late) we had no choice but to get on despite it being nearly as full. And to our delight on the way back a fight broke out as well. Let's just say the entire way back I was fondly remembering that new, clean, air conditioned, high-speed train we took from Rome to Venice last fall with envy and thinking just how rare that experience was in comparison to every other one of our Italian train experiences!
 

Lucky for us Wednesday meant we moved onto a new form of transit, a ferry to get to the island of Capri. After experiencing less than stellar public transit to get us to the harbor we were delighted by a nice smooth 45 minute ferry ride to this beautiful island just off the Amalfi coast. It was easy to see why it is a favorite vacation spot for the rich and famous as the blue waters and stunning views seemed difficult to tire of. Although we quickly noticed a trend with Capri, Naples and the rest of the Amalfi... there was either dirt cheap, somewhat unreliable, hot, crowded public transportation or substantially more expensive forms of private transportation. We decided to splurge a bit and opted for an air conditioned private bus escort to help us get to various parts of the island throughout the day. And let's just say when we saw the people smashed up against the windows of the tiny public buses going around hair pin turns we were more than happy with our decision.



These photos just don't do the blue water off Capri's coast justice...
simply stunning!

We were able to make it to visit the small town of Anacapri; ride the single person chair lift to the highest point on the island, Monte Solaro (about 1500 feet); take in stunning views of Faraglioni from various spots; enjoy yet another obligatory Italian meal of fresh seafood pasta; visit the largest town on the island, Capri, which was filled with expensive shops, exclusive hotels, and nice restaurants; see gigantic yachts, and of course, eat gelato. While we were hoping to be able to take a boat to tour the Blue Grotto (a sea cave that is flooded with a brilliant blue light because of the way the light enters and reflects from the water in the cave), when we saw how small the boats were and the rumor of how long you could be stuck waiting on these tiny boats we figured it was far from an ideal for a 13 month old on a hot summer day.

One of my favorite terrible family photos from atop Monte Solaro -
Emma picking her nose, me with a disapproving look, and Steve with a strange smirk on his face.

Riding the one man chair lift up over 1000 feet with Emma in my lap - don't show this to Emma's grandparents, it definitely would not be legal in the U.S!

Love love the Italian flowers!

Wish this was my terrace...

Faraglioni... literally means "stacks"

Love this photo of Emma passed out on Steve

This one's pretty cute too, so content after a gelato stop.

Needless to say we were all pretty exhausted from our day so we were content to hop the ferry back to Naples, eat more pizza, and for me to savor one of my hard to find favorites, Fanta Lemon before crashing for the night.

Come Thursday we were all anxious to move onto Positano and do some relaxing on the beach! Per usual, it seemed incredibly difficult to get there via public transportation and we had to take the ferry and connect through Capri to eventually get us to Positano, so in total it took us almost three hours to get there. In transit we sampled some famous Italian Limoncello (lemon liqueur) and decided it definitely was not the drink for us. We were so excited when we finally made our way into the beautiful Positano harbor, even though it was clear we had a lot of stairs ahead of us for the next few days. Somehow the Italians and Greeks have an art for building amazing towns into the side of cliffs and the Amalfi is no exception. Yet, once we had sweated through our clothes by hauling a child and all of our stuff up and down hundreds and hundreds of stairs, we found we had woven ourselves to a nice apartment with a phenomenal terrace and views.

Positano Harbor from the ferry... stunning.

That is someone's house! What a view of the coastline!

While neither Steve nor I was really sure there was a good reason to leave our balcony, we remembered our love of Italian food and our need to cool off. So after settling in and indulging in some seafood risotto we found the less touristy beach as the main beach was covered in umbrellas from edge to edge. It was so much fun to finally get Emma out in the Mediterranean and while I was nervous she would be fearful of the waves, after just a little coaxing she was in it and absolutely loved it! And I think the Italians agreed that she was one of the cutest little "bellas" around as she walked up and down the path to the beach in her swimsuit and hat and made her way through the rocky beach to get into the water!

So fired up after the wave "caught" her!

Daddy daughter moment... priceless.

Trying to convince me she could do all the stairs herself!

That night we took full advantage of our gorgeous view from our apartment of the town and harbor to watch a parade and other celebrations going on as it was an Italian holiday. Luckily we had been forewarned that they would set off fireworks from a boat in the harbor at midnight as a part of the celebrations. While we tried to stay up to watch them we fell asleep early and awoke to what we thought was fireworks being set off from our balcony they were so loud (if I'm remembering correctly I think Steve almost fell out of bed). Yet, somehow Emma managed to sleep right through it. Kids, I tell you...



View over Positano's beach from our apartment balcony

While we had thought about visiting one or two of the neighboring towns such as Sorrento on Friday, we decided against it as the beach, gelato, and some relaxing shopping and meandering Positano sounded much more appealing (that and we knew we had the mother of all travel days ahead of us on Saturday). I got a morning run in (or perhaps I should call it a stair workout) and we just genuinely soaked in the Italian life by the beach and eating amazing food. Follow that by another great evening on our terrace and I don't think I could have asked for a much better last trip (at least in the near future) to Italy.

Unfortunately Saturday was the furthest thing from relaxing as we've probably never had such an arduous travel day before. It started at 7 am and consisted of walking up a couple hundred of stairs to the bus stop and then we took a bus to a bus to a train to a bus to an airport shuttle bus to an airplane to a bus to a train to a tram to a short walk home. I'm serious, I'm not exaggerating at all. It took us about 10 hours to get back to Zurich. And on top of that Emma was starting to get a tooth and a cold and slept horribly on Friday night, but she brought her A game on Saturday and was a rock star all day.

To say the least we saw some of the best and worst of Italy in one trip. And sadly it was our last intercontinental trip before our move back. Good thing it was a good one. We are definitely going to miss living just a few hours from the Italian border. Sorry Kansas, you just don't compare.



Atop Monte Solaro on Capri