I haven’t blogged in awhile, although I have thought about it every day. I’ve been busy. MBA exams in early August followed by 18 days of traveling, then the fall semester starting again, my birthday, friends visiting, and TONS of work. At the beginning of this summer, I wrote on Facebook that I was declaring it “The Summer of Liz,” following a somewhat stressful year and disappointing spring. Without getting too mushy, and with not enough wood around to knock on, I have to say that it was one of the most fun, surprising, exciting, and all-around terrific summers of my life.

One of the exclamation points in the story of this summer was my weekend trip to the Amalfi Coast.

It was spur of the moment, as many of the best things are. When you live in Rome and the sun is shining, you can easily turn to your friend and say, “Where should we go this weekend?” If you’re smart, the answer will be “the Amalfi Coast,” and if you’re very lucky, that friend will be Brock Amhurst.

Brock is eleven years younger than I, with a wildly different background that involves his legal emancipation at age 16 and a 4-year stint in the American military, living on various European bases. But our senses of humor are the same, and my immaturity and his maturity meet somewhere in the middle – I’d say around age 28.

Several of us were thinking of going, but only Brock and I got around to buying tickets. And here’s where I tell you how to get to the Amalfi Coast from Rome:

1) Best way: Rent a car, or better yet, hire a driver. This is obviously the most expensive option but gives you the most flexibility and the best views, and is probably the fastest way. Also, you’ll have transportation once you’re down there to visit the various towns – Amalfi, Positano, Sorrento, Pompeii – without the hassle of taking public transport. It will take a few hours from Rome, and your knuckles will be white, but you’ll feel like a movie star, following the S-shaped curves with the mountain on your left and death the ocean on your right.

2) Second best way: In my experience, taking the bus. There is a bus that leaves from Tiburtina train station (Termini isn’t the only train station in town, y’all). You have to walk out of the station and down a sidewalk and past some street vendors to find the buses, so give yourselves some extra time. It’s a private bus company called Moruzzi, and you can buy tickets here (yikes – only in Italian). The tickets were 32 euros round trip, which is a bargain compared to the third option, below. Another upside is that you don’t have to change trains or buses with this option, just sit there and relax, but the downside is that it will NOT arrive on time if there is even a minute of traffic. We arrived two hours later than scheduled. Also, there is no bathroom on the bus (but you do make one stop).

3) Third, and worst-but-still-decent option: take the train from Rome to Naples (anywhere from 45 euros to 80 euros). Then change trains in Naples to the Circumvesuviana slow train (that’s right, Latin scholars, this goes “around Vesuvius”). It stops in every little one-horse town between Naples and Sorrento. Then you get to Sorrento. You can either stay there, which is lovely, or THEN get on a local bus to Positano or Amalfi. This takes a long time, and it can be pricey to add up all those tickets. But it’ll get you there.

Brock and I got our Marozzi bus tickets from Rome to Sorrento. Then we looked for a last-minute hotel. Our options were few. It was a weekend in the summer. What wasn’t booked was either far out of town or cost a million dollars. We read good reviews for the Hotel Villa Sorrento, and so we booked there. We knew we’d be out on boats all day, so we didn’t mind that it was in the middle of the town square and not dangling off the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Those cost an arm and a leg anyway, and this way we’d be convenient to restaurants and the bus stop.

The morning we were to leave, I was giving an English lesson to my one and only English student, Vanda. Vanda is amazing. If they were all like her, I’d abandon the practice of law and become a full-time English teacher. In her 60s, Vanda is a retired gynecologist and her English is already quite good. So she actually pays me to chat with her about things like proper nutrition and how to deal with Italian men. She is hilarious, and she’s a good friend, so after the official lesson we usually sit and talk for another hour or so. That morning, I mentioned that Brock and I were going to Sorrento that afternoon and she said she’d like to come, too. It was fine with me, and I knew it would be fine with Brock, so she quickly called her husband to ask if it was ok to let him know, and ran home to pack.

So the three of us, respectively born in the 1950s, 70s, and 90s, boarded the bus at the last minute and headed south. We got to Sorrento, late, checked in, and were very happy with the Hotel Villa Sorrento. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re a little too old and rich for a hostel but a little too young and poor for the Bellevue Syrene.

 

Friends 4eva.
(Thanks to Brock for the photo.)

What to say about Sorrento? The largest of the towns on the Amalfi Coast, and also the most accessible by road and rail, it is a cliffside jewel box rising out of glassy blue water. The town itself is fun, with delicious restaurants and Irish pubs and places to go dancing. Sorrento has its own cuisine, too – Gnocchi alla sorrentina (gnocchi with tomato sauce and mozzarella, not sure what could be better), spaghetti with clams, giant lemons to squeeze on everything, and limoncello to wash it down with. This is my favorite restaurant there (and the site of major drama on my last trip to Sorrento in 2001, including someone crying and someone else storming out (not me, believe it or not))! Dine under an indoor canopy of lemon trees and thank me later.

 

Sorrento looks like a giant cake to me.

Swoon.

In our one full day on the Amalfi Coast we decided to take a day trip to the island of Capri and take an excursion to the Grotta Azzurra – the Blue Grotto – which has been high on my to-do list for fifteen years. We went to the port, bought ferry tickets to Capri, then once there, more tickets for a boat that would take us to the other side of the island, and once there, another ticket for the little dinghy that would take us through the needle-eye hole and into the Blue Grotto. Once we got across the island, Vanda was so annoyed that we were being asked to pay an additional ticket for the entrance to the Blue Grotto (everything had made us think that the boat trip to the other side of the island included entry into the Grotto), that she was having none of it, so Brock and I went in ourselves. I kind of don’t blame her. This one little excursion cost something like 90 euros, more than the cost to get to the Amalfi Coast and back from Rome!

 

The way into the Blue Grotto is through this hole, on this little boat. The boat rower grabs the chain and pulls you in.

Y’ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EXHILERATING!!!!!!! SO WORTH IT!!!!!!!!! MAMMA MIAAAAA!!!!!

Someone, like, discovered this. Someone swam, I assume, through this little hole and discovered this day-glo wonderland of sapphire water in an echoing rock cocoon. We go through the hole, and then the dinghy rower told me I could jump in. No one else was doing it so I hesitated. Then I did it. I peeled off my shorts and t-shirt and jumped feet first, nose held, into the cool, salty water. I felt like I was jumping into a pool of diamonds. I really, really, cannot recommend this experience enough.

Then Brock jumped in, who, despite being a seasoned Air Force veteran with more life experience than any of the rest of us, apparently…can’t swim?!?! So he kind of hung on to me and kept his head above water, and my ear-to-ear grin says it all.

 

The awesomeness of jumping out of the boat and into this cool, glow-in-the-dark pool of salt water canNOT be overstated.

Then when we climbed back into the dinghy, the rower of the boat, who had been singing O Sole Mio, SPANKED me. Really hard! I think he did something similar to Brock. I was shocked, and not in a good way. But whatever. #ThisIsItaly.

 

Brock, and our little boat rower, who was a little too grabby with both of us.

Our reactions to the spanking (and the cost of this excursion):

More pictures of Capri:

The Isle of Capri (“CAPri”)

Sigh.

The famous Faraglioni rock formations, rising out of the sea, as high as a football field.

With Brock, still processing both the Grotto and the boat guy.

We had most of the next day to just hang out in Sorrento and enjoy a 4-hour lunch. Remember the luxury hotel I said we couldn’t afford? That’s where we had lunch, and the view was heaven:

 

The Hotel Bellevue Syrene, where we had a four-star, four-hour lunch.

We made our way back to Rome, on the bus, teetering on the edges of cliffs, and I thought to myself, how can The Summer of Liz get any better?

*******

Help planning your trip to the Amalfi Coast?? I strongly recommend this App: Amalfi Coast Travel Essentials.