Hiking Tour of Amalfi Coast of Italy
Day 1 May 6, 2023
This was a long travel day of flights and airports. I had three flights and was meeting my daughter in Newark so we could fly to Naples together. Arriving in Naples was incredibly easy. Probably the easiest country I have ever entered, hand the passport over, stamp and on your way. We only had another three hours to wait for our tour group. This extended to an additional hour when the guide was trying to track down two lost passengers, one ended up rerouted to Amsterdam and he finally gave up on the other person. We then travelled for over an hour by bus to the Agritourismo passing Mt Vesuvius along the way. I had been traveling for about 30 hours at this point so a nap and shower were necessary. Before dinner we walked to an old Roman castle that was at the end of our road. It had an amazing view of the coastline and villages below that we would be visiting in the next several days. Back to the agritourismo for a three course dinner which was amazing. Our fellow tour members were mostly from the United Kingdom and all well-traveled individuals. There were three single women and the rest were all married couples except us. My daughter was by far the youngest person, the next youngest were an American couple in their late-30s. Most of the people were in their 50s or 60s.
Day 2 May 7, 2023
We started the day with a short walk to the local town and a hop a very
crowded city bus to Bomerano, a neighboring town where the trails start. The trail that we took included paths that
were rock, cemented stone, stone steps, broken stone steps, city streets and a
stretch that was dirt. The vegetation is
extremely lush and I was surprised at how many plants I could identify. Many
flowers were in bloom. We lost one of
our group fairly early on as she fell when starting to go down some ancient
broken stone steps and became quite dizzy.
Luckily, we had two additional new tour guides that were tagging along
to learn the system for this tour company.
One of them helped her back to the town and took her to the hospital. She
ended up with a broken wrist and could not join us for any more hikes. On the
positive side, the views along the hike were amazing. There is hardly any wasted land. Terraced gardens were everywhere intermingled
with clay tile roofed houses and old stone ruins. The roads do not run
everywhere so some of the people still have to walk these trails to town and
use donkeys to hauls heavier items to their houses. The weather started off
cool and sunny but got too warm and humid rather quickly. I started getting over heated when going up
steep stairs while in the direct sun. I
made it back to our village and ate lunch while my daughter made friends with a
dog. There were numerous loose dogs
running about, not strays but not leashed. Only 6 of the 16 group members decided
to do an additional hike up the mountain side in the afternoon while the rest
of us declined. The best gelato shop had closed for lunch time but as soon as
it opened back up, we had a scoop before heading back to our room. Dinner was
again provided for us at the family farm and was another three courses. Dessert
was an amazing creamy ricotta based cold concoction with bits of pear and apple
in it. It was a clear night so we headed back out to
the old castle after dinner to look at the night sky and lights of the
coastline below. Not too many stars out but the lights below really lit up how
windy the roads are. There is no such
thing as a highway here and most of the cars have sideswipe damage.
Day 3 May 8, 2023
Today was a walk down to Amalfi (over 900 meters/ ft). It was mostly stones set in concrete however the spacing was an issue. The steps were random heights and lengths requiring one, two or three paces between risers. There were thousands of steps. My thighs and left hip were extremely sore by the time we got to Amalfi. The weather forecast said 30% chance of rain by around noon so it started raining at 10:00 and did not stop all day. Amalfi is extremely touristy and famous for its lemons. You can find pottery lemons, dresses covered in lemons, lemon drinks, anything you can think of with lemons. I bought my son a pair of shorts with lemons on them. Lunch was at a very good restaurant and I had a seafood salad with a thin lemon sauce. Very delicious. After lunch we went on a self guided tour of St. Andrews cathedral. The old portion of it is extremely old with frescos dating back 800 years. We could look down into the catacombs where they found numerous sarcophagus. Attached is a museum of old artifacts, artwork, marble columns and carvings. A miter on display had over 19,000 tiny pearls plus a bunch of gemstones and gold. After the museum is the crypt which has a domed ceiling with floor to ceiling frescos. Breathtaking as we came down the stairs. Back up the other stairs is into the modern church which is only a couple hundred years old and incredibly ornate. Even though it was raining and cool, I was going to go swimming after the church tour, but we heard bad news from our tour group. We were supposed to take a private bus back to our town at 5:00pm. Our bus driver had just been in an accident and died. We had to up our time of departure to 4:00pm taking the public bus. This meant I did not have time to go swimming. Nobody else was in the water except a couple wet suit wearing paddleboarders. I stripped down to my swim suit and waded out into the water trying to keep my swim suit mostly dry. The beach was killer on the feet as it was not sand but rather small pebbles. Dry off and get the hiking boots back on in time to get to the crowded public bus loading area. This was complete madness with people rushing to get on buses. The public buses are super clean, nice and cheap but only run every few hours so it is best if you do not miss it. The bus center guy told us which bus to get on and it was the wrong bus. It only took us as far as Bomerano where we got off and waited a few minutes for the right bus to pick us up. We finally made it safely back to our village. Dinner was planned by another relative at the Agriturismo that works at a Michelan starred restaurant. A wine tasing in the cellar with salami and olive oil dried bread followed by four delicious courses and finally limoncello liqueur.
Day 4 May 9, 2023
Woke up rather sore from yesterday. Thighs and calves are strained. We took the
public bus down to Amalfi where we boarded a ferry to Capri. It started raining so the majority of the
people headed inside to stand in the aisles.
I needed to use the restroom which was madness crowding through
people. While waiting I had a minor
celebrity sighting, thanks to someone else who recognized the actor. It was Zach Galford who has been in several
things including Good Girls. When we landed in Capri, most of our group went
hiking up the pathway to the main town while two of us got tickets for the
tram. We met up top in the touristy area
and traveled the main streets to one end of the island. The streets are wide enough for maybe three
people standing shoulder to shoulder, so they have modified skinny vehicles
that travel amongst the pedestrians. We stopped at Bela Lugosi’s eerie villa
and toured an elaborately marbled Villa Lysis.
This place was incredibly ornate with all marble floors and walls. It has
a sordid past as the original owner photographed naked boys and had an opium
den in the lower level, but the place is gorgeous. We then went across to the
other end of the island for a viewpoint of some arched rocks that boats pass
through. Supposedly, if you kiss the person you are with under the arch, they
are yours for life. By the time we got
back to the main city area it was crazy with tourists looking in all the
expensive designer shops. I waited in line for about 20 minutes for the tram
and decided to walk back down to the ferry terminal or I might not make my
sailing time and be stuck on the island for the night. I was by myself as the rest had gone ahead so
I made a slight wrong turn but got to my group with a minute to spare. The
ferry ride back was much nicer weather and great views of the Island of Sirens,
same one from Ulysses/Homer.
Day 5 May 10, 2023
Severe weather warning of thunderstorms and my aching legs made an easy decision. I was staying at the agriturismo resting. There were many splinters off the main group today with one couple staying with me, another couple walking their own route, two other ladies taking the buses to Ravello and back. The original plan was a hike up into the forests of a National Park then down a thousand steps to Amalfi. With the intense rain, the National park trail would not be safe so the new route was a bus to Amalfi, street hike to Ravello (neighboring city) and back. As I rested in my room, I heard the downpouring rain and was glad I gave my raincoat to my daughter to double up on as neither of ours were entirely waterproof. My balcony did not provide much of a view today as we are high enough up to be in the middle of the raincloud.
Day 6 May 11, 2023
Ruins day was planned for Herculineum and Pompeii. We went to Ercolano at Herculineum first which was a smaller city and got hit with a pyroclastic flow then 30 meters of ash. The ruins were truly amazing how well preserved they were. The walls with plaster coating and fresco paintings were visible in many houses. The tilework could be seen many places including a Neptune design in a bathhouse. There was a museum on site housing many of the artifacts that have been found including gold rings, necklaces, bracelets, urns, kettles, statues and etc. There is also an intact boat that had the wood carbonized from the heat of the pyroclastic flow. It was supposed to be a 30 minute bus ride over to Pompeii. After 1.5 hours on the bus in gridlocked traffic, we were told all of the roads to Pompeii were closed by the police for the Tour d’Italy bike race. They were not supposed to be closed until later in the evening but they did it earlier. We saw several wedding guests (party of the wedding party looked like) that were running on foot to try and get past the police barricade unsuccessfully. Our bus then just took us back to the agritourismo for a late impromptu lunch. We decided to walk around the town, have another gelato and then visit the building at the viewpoint. This building was built during Mussolini time period as a military training center and still has carvings on the front depicting soldiers. It is now a cooking school and is surrounded by a park. We had dinner in town that was crowded, very loud and took forever to get food but at least it was yummy.
Day 7 May 12, 2023
Walk/Path of the Gods. We started off the day in the clouds. After a short public bus ride to Bomerano, we set off hiking the Path of the Gods trail. This was the first real trail but it was extremely rocky. About an hour into the hike, it started raining, then it rained even heavier. Occasionally, there were breaks in the clouds that allowed us a view down to the sea. We spotted a waterspout that whirled about for a few minutes. The rain was so heavy that even with raincoats we were soaked through. About ¼ of the group decided to take a bus down to Positano while the rest of us climbed down the 1700 stone stairs. The sun came out for us and we walked the city and went to the public beach. This is a tiny beach with rocks and small pebbles that was jam packed with people. The waves were breaking really hard on the steep beach so I did not brave swimming. My daughter did go in with two others in our group and got taken down hard by the waves. She was picking rocks out of her swimsuit for the next hour.
